Place's need impresarios not managers - thoughts on reviving Britain's towns

 It was raining. Not the soft springtime rain that makes everything sparkle but that cutting, icy rain you get in Keighley's winters. Everyone is moving quickly, collar up, wanting to get their business done so they can get home. It's a scene repeated across the North's small towns, no bustle and hustle just get the job done and get home. Of course, the rain didn't help but neither does the gradual hollowing out of the town's offer - Marks and Spencer has gone, the market is a little gap-toothed with empty stalls and the glorious architecture of North Street can muster only a tattoo parlour and a couple of dowdy charity shops.

I'm sure that, were I to return to Mexborough where I interviewed market traders for my masters degree dissertation, I'd see the same. And the same slightly tired looking people would say the same things - a slightly bewildered take on why their town has gone from a happy bustling place to the depressing high street it is now. People will blame the supermarkets, Amazon and the council but then remember that their daughter-in-law ordered all that stuff off her phone for them. Hesitating they'll return back to their theme - ideas like an online shopping tax or cuts to business rates sound good to them as does more investment.

Across the whole of England, not just the North, this pattern is repeated. For every thriving town like Harrogate there's a dozen like Keighley or Mexborough. We get excited at how Whitstable, Hebden Bridge or Saltaire is thriving and glibly assume that with a bit of grant money, some paint and good wishes the same can be true of Sittingbourne or Scarborough. And this isn't just a British problem - you'll see the same in France, in Spain and across the USA. Outside tourist destinations, wealthy exurbia and delightful university towns, the pattern of decline is everywhere - fewer shops and fewer customers and a narrative harking back to what it was like in the old days.

Back in my advertising days, we used to talk about the "magic wand" clients. They'd arrive at our door with a brief that said something like "we're in the same business as (name of successful company), make us the advertising that will do the same for us". And we, being the good direct marketers that we were, would patiently explain that the company they wish to emulate built up its business over two decades and, as my colleague John Hinchcliffe would observe, "marketing isn't about magic it's about boring routine day after day". The client would listen and then respond with "ah, but...".

If we are to do something to improve these towns - and the new government seems set on doing so - we need to start by being honest about what can be done and what can't be done. The high street of the 1960s isn't a realistic aim and nor can we point to a place with millions of tourists visiting every year and 'replicate' what's there (and, however hard it tries, your town probably isn't going to get those millions of visitors). Nor will there be some sort of shopping revolution - even with an "Amazon Tax" - that will see all those old shops we vaguely remember returning to the high street.

So what should we be doing (other than making clear that there's no magic wand)? For some the whole thing is really about cities - if you make it ever so easy for people to whizz from these declining towns into the bright lights of the nearest city everything will be fine. And, in economic terms I have some sympathy with this view that towns need to become nice dormitories for well paid city workers if they are to succeed. But the problem with this is that, not only is well-paid employment dispersed, but that there simply are too many towns for this strategy to work for all but a few. The approach will be great for Otley or Hexham but do we really believe that putting on slightly nicer trains into Sheffield from Mexborough will suddenly make well-paid Sheffield workers move there?

Right now local councils, regional mayors and combined authorities across the North and Midlands are drawing up plans to get their slice of central government regeneration cash. These plans will include welcome investment in rail infrastructure, road schemes of one sort or another as well as plans for buses, cycleways and pedestrianisation. There'll be an assortment of town centre improvements, the encouragement of town centre living and lots of talk of 'green infrastructure'. But I worry that, in the end, there'll be more disappointment than transformation as high street shopping continues its decline and people vote with their feet. There's an irony too about that investment in speedy connections for workers - getting into the big city centre doesn't just help commuters, it means shoppers have more choice of where to spend their pound. Why would you go to Keighley when, for a few quid and half-an-hour, you can zoom into Leeds on a train and shop there?

The principle changes on the high street are the continued decline in comparison shopping as online buying grows, the arrival of the shop as a brand marketing tool and the shift from buying stuff to leisure and pleasure as the main driver of activity. My wife and I joke about our Christmas shopping trip to Harrogate - we drive there and park, have a coffee then do some perfunctory shopping before having a nice long lunch followed by a frantic dash round to the couple of shops we always planned to visit. On your next visit to a thriving high street, count the number of cafes, bars and restaurants, look at how boutiques, bookshops, delis and gift shops also serve food and drink. Then consider the arrival of new destinations - escape rooms, indoor crazy golf, adult ball pools (and those for the more traditional child audience), mini-cinemas and those places where you can paint a piece of crockery while having a cup of tea.

My view of the high street changed way back in 2007 when I read a (2005) article by Susie Pryor and Sandford Grossbart entitled "Ethnography of an American Main Street":

Other consumers and retailers describe social activities on Main Street, which they associate with a variety of experiences, including dining; window shopping; strolling for relaxation; jogging for health reasons; pub crawls; wine tastings; book clubs; language clubs; craft guilds; charity events; art events; parades; demonstrations; mass celebrations following major sports victories; and meeting friends. Many informants also refer to social interactions between and among retailers and consumers.

We got ourselves trapped in the idea of the town centre as a prosaic place of shopping, the old world of Hoagy Carmichael's 'Little Old Lady' - "A little bit of business here, A little bit of business there, Bet that you've been window shopping, All around the square" - when the truth is that most of the time business isn't the reason we're in the town centre. Pryor & Grossbart's list tells a different tale - the town centre is about our social life and our interaction with our neighbours not just about buying washing powder, new shoes or a steak. So if you spend a lot of money making the place look better without thinking about how you're going to get people into town then you're going to be disappointed. Not in the short-term - folk will say that the council is trying with that new pedestrianised bit, with the smart benches, pieces of public art or a water feature - but long-term you need to make your town somewhere that people know is interesting, varied and engaging.

Fred Kent who founded the Project for Public Spaces set out with Kathy Madden from the Social Life Project a series of ways to reinvigorate towns - it's an American perspective so needs caution in applying it to Britain but what's striking is that eight of Kent & Madden's nine suggestions are not about shopping (the ninth is street markets and farmers markets). The focus is on placemaking here and I suspect this will be in the core of the proposals winging their way to Whitehall for a slice of the expected cash bonanza. I don't think this is enough, what we need once we've made a place is a programme for that place, reasons - large and small - for people to visit Mexborough or Keighley or Melton Mowbray. What places need is the impresario, someone - or many people- to programme the events, occasions and activities that will bring the visitors.

Imagine if, instead of quaking in horror at the prospect of hen or stag parties, the town said "we'd love to have you here but come and talk to us first so we can make it a really special day". Think about the town that organised a parade - with a brass band and everything - for the winners of the local junior football league. And think of a place that filled its town with events and activities rather than trying to chase the rainbow by trying to be Shoreditch or The Ramblas. This approach calls for a different style of town centre management - less enforcement and control, more marketing and engagement - and for local authorities of every sort to give more attention to what we do rather than what we build.

My advice, such as it is, for those in government who want to make Britain's towns better is to look beyond infrastructure investment and to consider how we get the revenue in place to support the things that make towns work - good town centre management, well-funded and welcoming public libraries, great community centres, parks and playgrounds, flower beds and clean streets. And to work with those towns to shift them from centres of dull business into places for leisure and pleasure. This means better funding for councils to do these things, backing for BIDs and other innovations in managing centres. Finally, we need to get better marketing into these places, to escape from the deadening tendency to want to be like that super place you visited on your holidays or the funky central London haunt your daughter told you about. Perhaps an Institute for Place Marketing or some such might help by bringing together the best thinking on how to promote towns as destinations.

I appreciate that there are other considerations - better jobs, improving schools, reducing crime - in the agenda for Britain's towns but, if you want the public to see a real improvement then doing something positive about our changing high streets and town centres is imperative. And this starts with us no longer seeing the shop as the driver for town centre success - those libraries, parks, flower beds and band concerts are important too because the centre is a performance space for the town's citizens not just a place of business.

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Leisure and pleasure not tax and regulation - how to transform the high street

 

Next week Bradford will be debating a motion calling for a levy on 'large retailers' the revenue from which would be used by the council to do wonderful things so as to sustain high streets and town centres. It all seems very good:

That the Secretary of State gives Local Authorities the power to introduce a local levy of 8.5% of the rate on large retail outlets in their area with a rateable annual value not less that £500,000, and requires that the revenue from this levy be retained by the Local Authority in order to be used to improve local communities in their areas by promoting local economic activity, local services and facilities, social and community wellbeing and environmental protection.

But the truth is that this proposal represents - in terms of regeneration - a dead end. Not only does it make an arbitrary distinction in terms of business, essentially "big shop bad, little shop good" but it completely misses the reasons why, firstly, shops out of town are popular and secondly what drives change in high streets at the minute.

If we are to 'rescue' - or is the right word actually 'transform' - our high streets, we aren't going to do it through levies, taxes and regulations, through the use of governmental main force to order the way in which we shop. If we want great centres and high streets, we should start by looking at the ones that work and with asking why this is the case.

Above all though we need to stop thinking in terms of high streets as merely places where we shop. Two American academics (one an actual shop owner), Susie Pryor and Sanford Grossbart wrote about the 'ethnography of an American Main Street':

Other consumers and retailers describe social activities on Main Street, which they associate with a variety of experiences, including dining; window shopping; strolling for relaxation; jogging for health reasons; pub crawls; wine tastings; book clubs; language clubs; craft guilds; charity events; art events; parades; demonstrations; mass celebrations following major sports victories; and meeting friends. Many informants also refer to social interactions between and among retailers and consumers.

We recognise this description but miss out on the fact that all this meeting, playing, talking and enjoying takes place somewhere other than in a shop. We treasure these places because they are places of leisure and pleasure but just as importantly we are actors in the production of that pleasure. For sure, we want the meal in the restaurant to be tasty and the service to be smiling and easy but the real pleasure of the meal is in the company, the buzz and the interaction with our friends.

And we also know that such pleasure - the crowds, the buzz, the interaction - doesn't have to be in the high street. Julian Dobson writes about a London canal and concludes:

It’s easy on the eye, even if you wouldn’t want to investigate the canal bottom or some of the shrubbery too closely. It’s a place for wildlife. Sometimes it’s cultivated, with little gardens and pocket parks punctuating the path. The contrast with City Road couldn’t be greater.

The Regent’s Canal is a high street because it attracts people in the way that a good high street attracts people, whether it’s full of bars, shops or public buildings. It works because it’s a stage, a promenade and a garden. If we want our traditional high streets to have a future, that’s what they need to be too.

Despite these observations - academic and journalistic - public authorities remain wedded to direction, to tax and regulation rather than to creating the spaces that work. These won't all be havens of peaceful pleasure like the Regent's Canal - that's not everyone's leisure and pleasure - but they will be filled with people enjoying themselves, celebrating life and consuming the bounteous wonders that the world contains for our pleasure.

If there were no shops in the high street but it was filled with happy, smiling people out enjoying themselves would that not be a success? I think so.

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On Spare Time (or being busy doing nothing)

During a weekend of intermittent gardening, I’ve been thinking about what we choose to do during what we call our ‘spare time’. Indeed, often our ambition is to have a life more dominated by that ‘spare time’ and less by undertaking tasks on behalf of other folk. Or rather doing things for other folk because we have to not because we want to.

Ah ‘spare time’. You see the point of it is quite simple – those jobs we choose to do – we don’t have to do them. I didn’t have to spend an hour sweeping the drive or a further hour weeding, digging over and mulching the front beds. I did all that because I wanted to, because I get pleasure from the result of my labours. And those labours are just for me not for you or for the boss or for anyone else.

I do them knowing I could stop any time – have a cup of tea, watch something on the telly or just sit down, catch a breath and admire my handiwork. Or I could choose to do another task – maybe bake some scones, catalogue the books or polish the silver.

And the benefit of our civilisation – that we have only to work for around 40 hours in a week to get the money we need to enjoy our spare time, that many folk can claim vast amounts of ‘spare time’ by retiring while fit and healthy enough to make the most of that time and that we add even more ‘spare time’ through generous holidays.

The measure of a civilised place – of a great society – isn’t how much we produce but how much spare time we have to consume that production. The protestant work ethic was always nonsense – work doesn’t make man, work allows us the freedom to make the most of our ‘spare time’. And if we choose to use that ‘spare time’ taking a leaf out of that Connecticut Yankee’s book and doing nothing, that’s fine!

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