Rebuilding the high street

The grim pictures of boarded-up, graffiti-clad high streets that accompany today's report from the London Data Company into falling shop occupancy rates shouldn't really come as any surprise. But they are not, contrary to first impressions, a straightforward result of the current economic and financial crisis. They are more a result of the years of prosperity when governments thought both that consumption was the key to economic health, and that building megastores accessible primarily by car was the future of local economies. Wrong, it turns out, on both counts. Competition in the food market was redefined as the gargantuan struggle between supermarket chains . High streets were offered up to chain stores which could pay sky-high business rates but – lo and behold – have no stake in local communities when times are hard. Anyway, it's ill-bred to say "I told you so" (although all the people fighting for their own distinctive local communities could be forgiven for saying it today). The question is: what can be done about these dismal streets which have – literally – become blind alleys of consumerism? The government is still not getting it, according to the Association of Convenience Stores this week. High street variety and distinctiveness take a back seat in planning considerations. But these are the things people want from their towns and cities. Clearly, series of giant shopping centres will not serve us well in the face of climate change, or financial crisis. Neither do they present an appealing way of life. So we need to seek ways in which the hearts of our towns and cities could actively contribute to our well-being and help us to rebuild the connections and skills we will need make life better now, as well as to respond to future challenges. Reimagining the high street could start a creative cultural explosion that is not about finance or shopping, but a flourishing web of local, enterprising solutions to the challenges we collectively face. This needn't be a Roundheaded antipathy to shopping, but we can and must re-imagine trade as a dynamic series of exchanges that create and encourage local social and environmental value, and make the places we live and work dynamic and interesting. Do this, and the high street becomes a focus not just for trade in goods, but also ideas, connections and exchanges. It becomes somewhere assets are shared for mutual community benefit, and for active pleasure. We must get back to scale, to localism, to putting a value on social, community and environmental factors and not on ability to pay a huge business rate. We need to do this not to go back to the past and the Edwardian high street of our dreams but to keep hold of the idea that we live in communities, we need community centres and our high streets are perfectly placed to be the location of our optimism. The good news is that we are far from starting from scratch; the alternatives have been evolving on the margins. The question we now have to answer is what do we need to do to support the emergence of the infrastructure, structures and opportunities that can deliver the dynamic, vibrant economies of a low-carbon, high well-being future?