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| Daily Mail photo: Victoria Street, Wolverhampton |
I was drawn to an article in the most recent edition of The Economist, about the demise of the town center in the UK. I've noticed a lot of empty shop fronts in recent years in northern towns. Younger Britons seem to prefer to shop online or at out-of-town shopping malls, but some of us still want our town centers...and it seems there is a ray of hope for us old fogies:
According to the Economist: "Leigh Park, a suburb of Havant in Hampshire, has shown what a difference lower costs can make. Many landlords of shops in this poor area were fed up with paying business rates on empty units, so they dumped their property at auction. Encouraged by council grants, a developer bought the buildings cheaply, redeveloped the flats above the shops and offered the commercial space for about half of the going rate. A handful of small shops have started to trade in these longtime empty units, including an undertaker, a flower shop and a pet shop. They employ one or two people and manage to get by thanks to the reduced rent. The flats above the shops are let out at normal market rates. Centuries ago high streets looked a little like that, with a jumble of workshops, artisans and merchants living above. The notion that they should be purely for commerce is fairly recent. Eventually, high streets may revert to a mixture of uses, and survive. But many unsightly years lie ahead. There is only so much that can be done, even with a combination of local-government action and business savvy, to coax Britons back to the town centres they have abandoned."
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