How to fight urban domestos
Town & Country Planning, June 2005
“Big developers are urban domestos,” wrote Hugh Pearman recently in the Sunday Times. “They kill 99 per cent of all known existing character.”
Anyone who was wandered recently around the depressing Paddington Basin development, or indeed most modern shopping centres, could probably agree.
We are theoretically proud of our country’s heritage, and what makes our neighbourhood and region special, but we somehow assume that the miserable polyglot, glass equivalent of mush we get in most large developments is somehow inevitable.
The assumption is, by those gatekeepers who allow these developments, is that they will bring in more money. But there is just the beginning of a flicker of doubt about this beginning to emerge.
Recent research on both sides of the Atlantic has shown that money invested in small locally-owned business – which keeps money circulating locally – is worth up to twice as much to the local economy than money invested in the usual big brand retailers.
Then there is the very obvious fact that we all know, but barely mention: places that are distinctive attract investors and home-buyers better than places that are not.
I was recently involved in some fascinating research for Cheshire County Council and the Cheshire Rural Recovery Programme about how local policy-makers might go about making nine towns more distinctive.
This is not something that local authorities have thought much about before. Quite the reverse. As I say, many local authorities assume that the more they can concrete over any differences from any other town centre in the UK, the richer they will be.
So there is not much of an accepted way of going about things to fall back on for the consultants (my employers, the New Economics Foundation).
But for Alsager, Bollington, Congleton, Frodsham, Malpas, Middlewich, Nantwich, Neston and Sandbach, the study set out a series of ways in which – collectively and individually – they can build on what makes them distinct.
This was not a conventional marketing exercise. It assumed that branding for towns must be underpinned by a distinct sense of place, rather than simply having marketing messages imposed from above.
Another assumption we made was that distinctiveness had to be ‘real’. It must be rooted in local history – a living history – and resonate with local people.
We also realised that small things can be just as important as big things: the texture and feel of a place are vital to how it is perceived, and small changes – such as the removal of eyesores, even a lick of paint – can make a big difference.
The Cheshire study builds on work about distinctiveness by Common Ground in the UK, and Main Street and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in the USA, as well as local work by Action for Market Towns, the Civic Trust and others.
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council recently published a Local Distinctiveness Design Guide. This supplementary planning guidance document encourages developers to take the area’s distinct local character into account when planning new developments.
Of course, architecture does contribute to the distinctiveness of a town, but I think localists need to go further than this – and have a closer look at what constitutes local assets.
All neighbourhoods and towns have assets which go beyond the economic.
These are sometimes impossible to measure using conventional economic techniques – they may be, for example, a healthy network of local business or local traditions – but they constitute what makes a place distinctive.
In the Cheshire towns, these included the extraordinary volunteering efforts in Congleton, the canals that form the Cheshire Ring, the lovely industrial stone architecture in Bollington and of course, the tradition of making Cheshire cheese.
Of all these, I drew most pleasure from the cheese proposals.
Cheshire cheese is actually one of the oldest in Europe. It dates back to the 12 th century – the age of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart. It would be tragic to lose this distinctive taste, and lose it from the place where it emerged, below the radar of rootless, tasteless supermarket fare.
But it is also, potentially an asset. It is made in the county, and there is an annual fair there for cheese-buyers, but it is hard to buy locally, and it could mean so much more in the future – attracting cheese enthusiasts from all over the world.
It might happen; it might not. But the key anywhere like this, I think, is not to assume that local authorities can do all the work.
They have to foster local alliances and organisations and persuade them to use those assets – local enthusiasm, empty buildings – to make things happen.
This is the combination that works in the small towns of the USA. In fact, it may well be the only combination that has ever made anything happen anywhere in the world.
