Town & Country Planning, January 2012
I have noticed over recent years, since the days of the clone town campaign, that Tesco has increasingly become a symbol of everything that is not local.
That is certainly the way I see things, and the few times I have ventured into my nearby store – to be glared at by the very obvious security guards – has rather confirmed me in that view.
Now research from the advertising industry from Starcom MediaVest, seems to confirm it. Only 27 per cent of Tesco shoppers say they are attracted by their store brand’s sense of community, compared to 41 per cent of Sainsbury’s shoppers.
It may be unfair to Tesco to load the blame onto them, though it may also explain four consecutive quarters of sales falls. In many ways, the Tesco brand is less embattled than it was in the days of Tescopoly
But the argument about the impact that supermarkets have on high streets, whether they are in town or out of town, has been given second wind by the report by Mary Portas, TV’s Queen of Shops about the future of the high street.
The out-of-town moratorium which she was expected to recommend was not in the final report, and it is impossible to know whether it was the powerful lobbying of the big retailers or the encounter with 10 Downing Street that stymied that idea.
But Portas was exactly the right appointment at the right time. She had the imagination and the independence to see the crucial truth about the survival of local high streets – that what is important is bustle, spectacle, colour, distinctiveness and face-to-face shopping,
She was able to articulate this, aware that this is precisely the opposite prescription pedalled by most retail analysts and local authorities – who over the last ten years have preferred tidiness, bland uniformity, and ubiquitous formulae.
She understood also that this needs to be backed by pro-town centre planning policies, which are arguably in the draft national planning framework but which could be more explicit.
She also understood that there is an economic dimension to local distinctiveness. People want to live and invest in real places, but it is the circulation of money – not just the amount of money that comes into an area – that makes all the difference to the local economy.
I took part in at least one of the Portas consultation events and found the subtle contribution of the big retail lobbyists slightly creepy.
They were right, of course, that an out-of-town moratorium would hardly solve the problems of the high street. Yes, high streets need to re-invent themselves in a whole range of ways before they can stand on their own two feet again. But, goodness me, a moratorium would help them do so, and give them some breathing space to recover.
It will probably take more than Portas to chip away at the deadly conservatism of most retail thinking by local authorities. But in one way, in particular, I think her report will be remembered – and that was the emphasis she put on markets.
I would like to think she was influenced here by the research by my colleagues at the New Economics Foundation some years, starting with the Queens Market in Newham. Not only was this neglected institution generating £13m a year for the local economy, it was providing vegetables 53 per cent cheaper than the local Asda.
Championing markets has thrown the spotlight on towns like Ludlow where developing markets has been a key element of the new mix.
It will also put some pressure on those towns which sold off their medieval markets to build another bland shopping centre to hoover up local spending and remove it from the area.
I hope nit also puts a bomb under places like Birmingham which are trying to sell off their wholesale markets, on which the other markets depend.
A national market day is hardly local distinctiveness in action, but it speaks to the crucial importance of bustle, organic growth and human contact that Jane Jacobs championed in New York a generation ago with her book The Death and Life of the Great American Cities.
We have come a long way since then in our cities, but so many of our market towns remain in the dead zone – the pre-Jacobs dark ages.
Perhaps that is why, even at the height of a double dip recession, the Starcom MediaVest survey showed that customers believe “providing a sense of society and enjoyment” is more important than price alone.