The city / city centre of the future (if any)
TurquoiseTastic
Kerygmania Host
in Purgatory
It is a common lament (in the UK at any rate, and I suspect more widely) that city-centre commercial districts are being hollowed-out by out-of-town shopping centres and online delivery. This seems very bad for cities in both an economic and social sense - I am a Jane Jacobs fan and surely this tendency devastates the varied urban ecosystem that she thought was so essential for the health of cities and thus, by her analysis, civilization.
What I have not heard is any convincing remedy for this from anyone. My suggestion - big public investment in public goods such as theatres, leisure centres, museums, stadiums etcetera, encouraging footfall and providing a reliable nucleus around which the private sector can operate. I don't know if this would work but I would like to hear local and national politicians (and, of course, Shipmates) come up with a better idea if not. It seems like a very big structural problem at the moment.
What I have not heard is any convincing remedy for this from anyone. My suggestion - big public investment in public goods such as theatres, leisure centres, museums, stadiums etcetera, encouraging footfall and providing a reliable nucleus around which the private sector can operate. I don't know if this would work but I would like to hear local and national politicians (and, of course, Shipmates) come up with a better idea if not. It seems like a very big structural problem at the moment.
Comments
I think you are on the right track. Small independent unique shops, cafes etc below residential accomodation
In my part of the world, this is what a lot of new construction looks like. Whenever we drive past a new build of this sort, my 21 year old son who cares about housing needs and urban planning gives audible cheers.
I've also admired the insights and suggestions of Jane Jacobs. To open up the issues raised in the OP a little: the built environment becoming more human-sized and intimate (city zones as neighborhoods) is a beginning but there are questions about who belongs and who might not find it accessible. Too often differently-abled people have to use ramps, public toilets, wheelchairs on pavements designed by abled-bodied urban planners who don't understand the impractical sides of what results. Urban policing of the homeless, unemployed, queer youth, those with addiction issues, leaves much to be desired. The streets or parks after dark are often not safe for women or children. There's also a false nostalgia for the days when deliveries were made by 'milkmen' or 'postal services' but their work, like the labour of those cleaning public toilets or streets or collecting garbage, could be exploitative and underpaid.
Here in South Africa, our major urban centres have been through extremes of gentrification (erasing communities and cultures that were there before and now can't afford to stay in the city) and urban decay, the collapse of inner cities and abandonment of the destitute forced to squat there. The shelters put up a couple of decades ago to protect vulnerable women and children from abuse are now understaffed and overcrowded. And more flexible office hours in corporate workplaces following the pandemic has often meant that smaller shops have to stay open later in the evenings if consumers are not to opt for malls with extended shopping hours and mixed purpose designs. Public transport is not supportive of flexitime workers, so more people use cars and only come into the city for work. Once many office-workers could go to city churches for early morning or lunch-hour Mass but now it isn't safe to keep churches open except on Sundays. At weekends only tourists come into citybowl streets so parks and museums, small squares or piazzas are often left empty and under-utilised.
The office block is AIUI to be retro-fitted (I think that's the term) as flats...a plan supported by our tory MP, and by our Labour council.
The adjacent High Street (largely pedestrianised) is now bereft of any big-name stores - even some of the poundshops have closed! - but still seems fairly busy, if rather run-down. We even have a Post Office, an excellent Polish shop (polski sklep ) and a Bank!
A nearby C of E church - redundant for many years - has been re-opened for worship, and is open now and then during the week, but imaginative plans for its future use were scuppered (for the time being) by Covid.
On the other hand, the Covered Market which was dying on its arse mainly due to unaffordable rents has suddenly sprung back into life. It is down to one butchers and one grocers (I remember 8 and 2 respectively), but has gained two breweries and a number of small independents. The sports shop has closed to move to bigger premises in Thame as it can't afford anywhere closer (it was set up by the staff of a long- term Oxford institution that folded). I do wonder what changes have been made to the rents as it was getting very empty well before ye plague hit. I suspect as its the opposite direction to the Westgate from the centre of town that it gets the tourist trade rather than the shopping trade.
Not sure what the message of all that is except that there do seem to be ways of making small shops thrive in the right spot. However I wonder how well it works in places that aren't a Destination already, and I suspect that any council that tried to use business rates as the reliable cash cow they used to be will find itself running out of shops very fast. Where we are, just outside, Greggs closed, I thought they were a licence to print money? And while we do have a real butchers and a Four Candles, there's also a number of empty premises including one built as flats over a shop that has never yet been let.
The 200 people injured might disagree with that. Bombing a city centre is NEVER a *best thing*...
Possibly the greatest example of this, and the thing that really brought it home for me, was one of the larger units in my nearest city centre shopping centre being converted from a department store into an adventure golf course.
Personally I don’t see this as a problem. Public spaces have always evolved and adapted to societal changes - 200 years ago those same city centres were full of factories and mills, then everything was little speciality shops, then came the rise of the department stores and supermarkets, and now we’re seeing the rise of the entertainment industry as retail moves more and more online and people can spend more of their leisure time on entertainment rather than shopping.
Well, AIUI, the majority of people had been evacuated before the blast.
However, my point was (as I'm sure you appreciate) that demolishing a city centre - however ghastly - by bombing it is hardly the right thing to do!
Otherwise they are dead and mainly frequented by the car-less and those who still smoke cigarettes.
However, we have a pharmacy, a most engaging d-i-y shop (think Fork Handles, run by a Sikh family), a chippy, several general stores (including a fair-sized Co-Op) and, wonderful to relate! a proper Butcher!
Several old motels have become residential establishments. One old motel has been completely renovated and is now open for business. Old Department stores are becoming mixed use with retail and entertainment on the lower floors, office space in the mid section, and high end residential areas on the upper floors.
It still has a skid row, though. The past administration tried group housing, but that did not solve the problem. The new administration is moving to a housing first option which will help homeless people get into a residential unit and then provide wrap around services to help them establish sustainable housing.
It seems young people now prefer living near the center of town. They are not so concerned about owning a home. Rentals are the thing now, but I would think as they get older, that might change.
The centre became a place where only the poor/poorest lived. Angel Meadow. Ancoats. The place at the end of Deansgate which was demolished for Central Station and the GN goods shed.
Then almost everyone moved out. The centre was almost entirely commercial. The residential population was tiny.
But now the centre is fashionable again. Some of the apartments have prices/rents that are absolutely eye-watering. The population of the central districts has shot up.
I suppose what I am saying is that places evolve. Some people seem to want to preserve an idealised version of the 1950s high street in aspic. I submit that is neither possible nor desirable. It's rather like subsidising stagecoaches to compete with trains and airlines. We have to allow change to happen.
I'm not sure how to make progress except by careful experiment. Although it's frustrating for someone like me, who would ideally like to do a central plan, starting with tramways along all arterial routes. Fortunately, I have not been made President-for-life.
I think you have to start by asking the question "what is a city / town centre for"? And that question is deeply tied up with the question of what your city / town looks like, and how people travel, and so on.
We've had discussions here before about the "15 minute city" concept, in which all your daily needs can be found within a 15 minute walk / cycle from your home. Which isn't of any help to you if what you're doing is the weekly grocery shop for a family of 5, because you can't carry that much stuff.
I don't think many people want to return to the model of a high street where shoppers buy small quantities of food daily from the baker, the butcher, the fishmonger, and so on. Frankly, we don't have time for all that, and nor can we afford it. Supermarkets and bulk purchases are here to stay.
You know, I almost put in a comment about someone showing up here to brag about the carrying capacity of their cargo bike / trike. I think, once again, we need to distinguish between "this is possible", and "this is achievable by the average person", let alone "this is achievable by everyone in society except for that small number of disabled people we'll make special provision for".
I do not underestimate the volume of a wheely shopping trolley at all. It's less than the volume of a normal grocery store cart (or at least, what passes for normal here!)
Google finds me typical-looking wheely shopping carts with 40 litres internal volume. The backpack I used to take shopping when I did all my shopping by bike had 80 litres internal volume. I would typically exceed the capacity of that 80 litre backpack just doing a weekly shop for my wife and I, and would cycle home with a bulging backpack, plus some bonus carrier bags hanging from the handlebars. With the kids as well, it would be impossible, and that's not before I include the idea that I might actually have to take a child with me to the supermarket.
So if I can ask, how often do you shop (for food, or cleaning products, or cat litter, or any other consumables that I'd expect an average person to buy from a supermarket.)? I'll have to do the exercise and measure the volume of stuff that enters my house on a weekly basis, but I think just my household's weekly consumption of milk and orange juice would exceed the capacity of a wheely shopping trolley.
Cargo trikes are in the latter category. They're stable, don't require speed to be maintained to stay upright, are geared low by default and can easily be electrically assisted.
Even a week’s shopping (on holiday) would nearly fill such a trolley, and I seriously doubt that I could have got a fully laden cargo trike up the hills around here. All the places where I have seen that sort of thing in use have been fairly flat - not like Newcastle, Durham or Edinburgh, for example.
The vision for a fifteen minute city seems a good one to me, the pathway towards it far from obvious.
The biggest wheely cart I found on Amazon has a 22-gallon internal volume, about 83 liters. I could probably get a full week's worth of shopping for two into it -- but once I factor in cat food and cat litter, it gets harder. If I had canned cat food, litter, and laundry detergent on the list on the same week, it would be dicey.
Where I live, though, the real problem is that everything got set up for cars decades ago, and transitioning away from that is hard. When things are set up for cars, it's inconvenient and dangerous to do without, so people hang onto their cars, and then in turn it's hard to make things better for biking, triking, walking, etc, because most people have cars.
And if you already maintain a car for whatever reason -- because your job isn't accessible any other way, or in my case, because it's paid for and the maintenance and fuel costs are so low it's cheaper than public transit, plus it goes lots of places public transit does not -- then you use it. Because you already have it.
So for instance, I could get a trike -- because I now have a garage, I have a place to park one for the first time in decades. But getting to the good supermarket means negotiating one of the worst intersections in the city. You couldn't pay me to do that any way but in a car.
I'm on your side of the argument - but I must add, I dropped into a bike shop (one of my pedal cranks had just fallen off
I almost splashed 500 quid online on what then seemed a bargain kit to make one of my bikes electric after that, before I suddenly thought 'hang on a minute, that's 500 quid!'
Rather it's that if you want to, you should be able to.
Rather more pertinent to the OP than my cycling anecdote, the council put a flyer through our door yesterday inviting us to 'help shape the future of C_'. C_ was a nice-ish bit on the edge of what was considered inner-city hellscape; the latter is now a cheek-by-jowl mix of social housing and gentrified old houses (more similar to London - up here 'nice' bits and 'not nice' bits used to be rather geographically spread) while the former has been, for a while, somewhere that estate agents claim houses are located, sometimes on the flimsiest excuse.
I read the lot online - it took half an hour. The only solid thing I came away with is that they want to increase tree cover from 28.5% (of what?) to 30%... but in the process and hidden in the detail, it seems there will be fewer limes and horse chestnuts (as is currently the case) and more small ornamental 'lollipop trees' as someone I know calls them. So it looks like the tree budget got moved sideways into the 'public consultation on the future cityscape' budget.
This is a big city and is now rolling in money, which was not at all the case 30 years ago when lots of things were derelict, it costing more to pull them down or redevelop than the outcome was worth. I was in Swansea last week, which I remember as a prosperous place - it may still be so, but the town centre reminded me of the inner-city of 30 years ago. There will certainly have to be a re-imagining. It will probably be accompanied with focus groups.
Bloody hell, is your bike shop selling gold plated ones?!
Cheap cargo cycles are sub £1000, with the really fancy ones pushing £5k. Mine was £2k 12 years ago, and is now pretty much end-of-life (I may be able to revive it with the aid of a tame welder).
I suppose if your experience of cycling is a £200 Halfords special they do seem expensive, but they last a long time and cost very little to run (the biggest expense is tyres). I think a lot depends on what you're comparing with - more expensive than walking or a regular bike, but cheaper than a car or a bus pass.
We do have a cargo bike as well and are big fans of them, but for food shopping we have not found them to be necessary as long as we shop fairly frequently.
I am waiting for a delivery as I type this post
This isn't purely about shops but about amenities like transport, leisure facilities, libraries and so on. And even in the age of the online delivery the smaller size of supermarket's manage to thrive on top up shops.
This isn't a surprise - mass transit, by its nature, favours a hub-and-spoke shaped model, whereas to personal transport, a hub is a nexus of congestion that should be avoided.