Why High Streets?
Our town centres and high streets have a vital role to play in driving economic growth, promoting health and well-being, tackling the climate crisis, delivering new housing, and providing attractive places where people of all ages want to live, work, shop, study, play and socialise.
But many of our centres are currently “broken”, and in need of urgent repair and reinvention.
Although there is no “one size fits all” approach to the revitalisation of our high streets and centres, there is a blend of actions and interventions that, taken together, can help build back confidence, resilience and recovery.
The high street is a place that is pivoting, and has been doing so for some time. The impact of online retail, the declining UK economy and its effects (austerity, wage stagnation, consumer spending power, the cost of living crisis), Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have all had successive waves of detrimental impact on our local high streets as places to shop. The high street now needs to adapt to survive.
However, what has not ever changed, is the human need for connection. Or longing to engage with and be engaged by each other remains central to the role of the high street now, and in 5, 10, 30 years to come. The high street has the potential to address a number of wider societal issues in a plethora of ways: mental and spiritual health, social isolation and food poverty to name a few.The key to successful future high streets will be co-location, flexibility and adaptive reuse.
This cycle the NLA High Street Expert Panel wanted to go about things a little differently. As a group, we decided that we wanted to create an output in the form of a shared resource that might be of benefit to the wider sector. Through discussions in our core and sub-group sessions across the year, we have concluded that an interactive toolkit, a ‘how-to guide’ on a number of key topics and issues might be a useful, engaging resource for people across the sector, including local authorities, built environment organisations, funders, developers and local communities. The topics will be centred around the NLA 6 pillars of Placemaking.
Where are we now?
Within each ‘toolkit’ topic we will try to spotlight and signpost exemplar case studies which address some of the pressing issues and challenges we are facing in the UK and beyond.
- What are the main challenges and opportunities for high streets post-pandemic
- How are high streets are adapting to evolving consumer, social and planetary needs (experience economy, hybridisation of space, climate and social justice)
- How can we best balancing the needs of different stakeholders (investors, landowners, businesses, consumers, communities and the third sector)
- The role of cultural and creative initiatives on the high street in driving good growth
- The need for a transformational restructuring of the business rates model
- Challenging prevailing norms in the ‘standard’ real estate value proposition - what about green or social value-led propositions?
- The potential for high streets to drive innovations in public service offers (healthcare, for example), the green revolution
- The potential role and impact of anchor institutions (NHS, Education/Cultural, Police, Faith groups etc.)
- How can the high street turbo boost our path to a more sustainable future, by promoting active travel, greening and biodiversity, adaptive reuse and retrofit?
- The power of community wealth building, to help create sustainable economies and more connected and empowered communities (Community Land Trusts, Asset transfers)
- The radical shift needed in designing safer, inclusive and more accessible places for all
