Why geographers shouldn't stop caring about the high street

RGS-IBG Managing Editor: Academic Publications Sep 19

By Julian Dobson, Sheffield Hallam University

Geographers' interest in high streets has ebbed and flowed over the years. The 1980s saw a flurry of interest as traditional town centres were reshaped by out-of-town or edge-of-town shopping centres designed to be accessed by car.

More recent scholarship has continued to frame high streets and town centres as shopping environments, often referencing a common trope of the 'death of the high street'. The idea that the high street is dying is common in media and policy circles, too, prompting a rash of initiatives such as the UK Government’s Future High Streets Fund.

Acknowledgement of the wider functions of town centres has been relatively muted, however, although some attention has been paid to what might be described as 'more-than-market' approaches to retailing that ‘develop and create community’.

Even if the idea of the high street as a shopping destination is declining, high streets still have a fourfold centrality in our towns and cities. They are often the historic and physical heart of localities; they continue to be hubs of economic activity; they are social gathering places; and in many cases they are still cultural centres for their communities. High streets continue to be associated with a strong sense of local identity and exert an emotional pull, sustaining ‘the basic human need to feel connected’. Human, economic, physical and cultural geographers can thus all find plenty to interest them in high streets.

It is this idea of connection that has driven much of the recent work by Power to Change, a distributor of National Lottery funds in the UK that supports community businesses (locally accountable organisations that trade with a social purpose).

In the last two years, Power to Change has commissioned researchers at Sheffield Hallam University to explore how community businesses can contribute to high street regeneration and what can be learned from a pilot programme to invest in prototype ‘community improvement districts’ (CIDs), which aim to give local residents a greater say in planning and decision-making about their high streets.

A key finding from the latter research is that if we want to know what might help to regenerate high streets, especially in more deprived areas, we should think about relationships and trust rather than new developments and attractions. CIDs, we found, should be thought of as a community development approach to high street regeneration rather than as a new model of governance.

People in the CID pilot areas responded most positively to signs that decision-makers cared about them and the varied ways in which they used and inhabited high street spaces.

This took many forms. In Kilburn, North London, for example, a ‘toilet hackathon’ was held to consider what could be done about the loss of public conveniences.

Image produced by the One Kilburn project as part of their community engagement work. Credit: Power to Change.

In Hendon, Sunderland, a neighbourhood high street that had a reputation for crime and was blighted with shuttered shops got its first Christmas tree for almost a century. Signs were put up branding the street as the 'heart of Hendon' and Back on the Map, the charity running the CID project, arranged with Sunderland Council for household support vouchers to be valid in local shops. In Wolverton, Milton Keynes, a former charity shop was turned into a pop-up community hub, offering facilities such as a repair café where residents could get things fixed and learn how to mend clothes or electrical items.

The key to all these activities is care - the sense that someone is taking time to listen to local people and respond to their concerns, and that people have the chance to get together to care for each other and their environment.

For geographers and related researchers, these findings open up promising avenues for further exploration. High streets may function as unnoticed hubs of diverse economies, and key nodes in local emotional geographies. These are issues that an emerging network of researchers centred within Sheffield Hallam University are keen to consider further, and we would be delighted to hear from academics who are interested in being part of our High Streets Research Network.

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About the author: Julian Dobson is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Dobson, J. (2022) Community businesses and high streets: ‘taking back’ and leading forward. Available from: https://www.shu.ac.uk/centre-regional-economic-social-research/publications/community-businesses-and-high-streets

Dobson, J., Swade, K., Graham, K., and Arbell, Y. (2023) Community improvement districts pilot programme: final report. Available from: https://www.shu.ac.uk/centre-regional-economic-social-research/publications/community-improvement-districts-pilot-programme-final-report

Marvin, S., McFarlane, C., Guma, P., Hodson, M., Lockhart, A., McGuirk, P., McMeekin, A., Ortiz, C., Simone, A., Wiig, A., (2023) Post-pandemic cities: An urban lexicon of accelerations/decelerations. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12607

Pile, S. (2023) Learning from Stoke-on-Trent: Multiple ontologies, ontological alterity and the city. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12558