Can a return to Localism save the High Street?
With the UK in lockdown and many retail outlets closed, photos of deserted town centres appear to reinforce the notion of the decline of the High Street. Yet nearby are now many home working individuals who would normally leave their houses early each morning, travel to bustling city centre business districts and return late in the evening. They would grab a meal and groceries at an express supermarket between their workplace and the train station, they might catch a drink with friends or undertake some leisure activity as, by the time they got home after their commute they would be too tired or the local venue shut.
People in lockdown are having to shift their mindset of what constitutes usual daily working activity as they embrace the transition from office to home working and there is expected to be a sustaining of this change in culture once the pandemic and its restrictions have passed. With remote logging onto IT systems and networks and video conferencing people have found that they can carry out many of their employment activities at home and enjoy the benefit of not having a commute and gaining more leisure time.
Reducing travel and spending more time in the locale of where you live could stimulate a revival of the High Street. That noted, the services and facilities currently provided will have to adapt to suit a world where our isolation has led to an even greater awareness of digital retailing and where we can socialise and spend leisure time virtually.
Instead of shopping and socialising in a city’s business centre a new localism will draw on an infrastructure of facilities where those with home workplaces can buy lunch, use services such as a bank or post office or meet friends in a café bar after work. Accessing community facilities such as a doctor’s surgery, leisure centre or just relaxing in the pleasant environment of a well-designed public realm will also perpetuate the life and economic viability of a town centre.
Holmes Miller has looked at a number of design led incursions that could be made within a High Street to suggest how a commerce led, mono-use environment, with limited daily usage, can be developed into a vibrant, sustainable town centre with greater social interaction, community spirit and local identity. We will explore some of these interventions in the following days.
We furthermore have considered how the technology that people have embraced for communication, leisure and commerce during lockdown can be harnessed, rather than being seen as the enemy of the high street, to create a digital overlay that joins, rewards and provides accessibility to many aspects of life and services within the town.
Our proposals embrace a strategy which activate declining town centres by creating links and multi-dimensional animation through a variety of ways:
Rather than a retail mono-culture a variety of different uses are placed in, along and above the high street to animate the streets at different times of the day.
A mix of learning spaces alongside flexible workplaces are introduced into the town centre so that the need for local services increases alongside the commercial activity.
Temporary and ‘meanwhile’ uses of vacant spaces such as incubator units or pop-up cultural/artistic interventions incentivise people to stay longer in the town and allows for testing of new industries and activities in shared spaces.
Using technology to connect local people to local resources, and reward exploration
As Mary Portas declared:
“We need to put the heart back into the centre of our high streets, reimagined as destinations for socialising, culture, health, wellbeing, creativity and learning.”
