Some thoughts about dying town centres

[OtterTails]

I have been reading an older thread from 2022 about how many towns across the UK are becoming hollow shells of their former selves. How anti social issues have increased in many of these dying towns, with empty shops and even entire disused precincts.
My own old home town suffered a similar fate - where once there was a mix of social backgrounds and culture, old and young, this has steadily been replaced by troubled souls (addicts/ street drinkers, etc). You never see elderly people there now, and the regular shoppers disappeared after the closure of M&S about 5 years ago. One reason that likely makes this worse is that the local council placed a lot of the troubled singles in the areas around the town centre, which I think has put the last nail in the coffin.

But even though most of us are aware of big stores such as Amazon and online shopping having played a huge pat in this decline, I think there's more to it. Probably a mix of many reasons. We shop differently now, and the wold is changing, etc etc...

And then I thought (not heard this mentioned before), since so many people in the thread said that difficult road systems and parking fees have put them off going into town, maybe our increasing car use has played a big role, too.
There are far many more people on the roads now than ever before, and many older town centres don't have the space or infrastructure to manage this. So in this sense I think that the way we use our cars has altered how we choose to shop, which is quite different to say 20 years ago at the latter end of the high street boom, when many people still used public transport to go to town, even if they owned a vehicle. Or there were simply less people driving, so the roads/carparks weren't as chock full.

Just a thought, it might not just be about business rates or online shopping.

In my old town now, most of the people on the dying high street are at the lowest income bracket, which was absolutely not the case even 10 years ago. I am wondering if this is because they are less likely to own a vehicle - and the only shops that remain cater to this market.
So our larger economy is shaping the decline also.

Most of the pretty, thriving towns I know aren't particularly affluent, but they do have a mix of culture and age ranges, and people coming through often. My old home town doesn't, so the casino's and cheap shops are the only one's left.

We went in to Marks the other day, the mens section looked like fast food uniforms and deck chairs

Terrible

My local city centre is a shadow of its former self. Meanwhile, the large retail park on the edge of town, next to the motorway junction, is thriving & has recently been expanded.
Not coincidentally, the retail park is clean, well-maintained, easily accessible and there is plenty of free parking. There are no beggars, chuggers, scammers, noisy protesters or religious nutters. It feels like a secure safe space for everyone, including families & retired people to visit and enjoy a day out.
Meanwhile, the council has enacted draconian anti-car policies to discourage people from driving into town and has recently escalated & expanded parking charges to deter visitors even more. The city centre is a dirty, squalid mess which feels unsafe to and in which visitors can expect to be regularly harassed by low-lifes. I wonder why it is struggling?

We live on the outskirts of a small town. A bistro and a takeaway have closed down in the last 3 years, but that's the extent of loss. Several other shops have moved in to larger sites and other shops have taken the smaller premises.

Our butchers (2), bakers, cafes, delis, ironmongers, greengrocer, clothes shops, hairdressers etc all look to be doing really well. I wonder what makes the difference? There's a bit of tourism, but not enough to sustain everything. Parking is free and there's a community bus.

In my town it absolutely is the parking charges and the business rates that are killing off the high street. When I moved here, it was a thriving town. There were a couple of free car parks a bit out from the centre and some cheap car parks right there in the middle. There was also pretty good bus connections.
Now the parking charges are ridiculous and the buses don't run so there is less footfall in the high street as it's been made more difficult to get to. This, coupled with the high rates have meant loads of shops closed down and so there's now even less reason to go there.
There are also 2 out of town shopping centres with free parking about a 20.minute drive away so of course, people go there instead as they know they can actually get what they want there.
Both of those shopping centres have been built since online shopping has been a thing but they are always full. They've had to add extra parking at one of them recently as it's so popular.

I love our out of town shopping centre as it has a (free) covered play area for the kids - we go there all the time and I spend money on bits and bobs while we’re there. I would definitely go to our town centre if it had something like that too.

Our city centre is being revamped with housing, shops and stuff to do but I rarely go in anymore

When we first moved here I was there every weekend sometimes all day. Our music festival used to be spread out across the city. But shops closed and there was less to do.

It's a shame.

I feel like the missing ingredient is the old-fashioned market, like you have in Europe. People will go into town to shop or eat for what you can't buy anywhere else, because it's cheap, local or special. Where it's an experience to go, a destination. Unfortunately our traditional indoor market was demolished in the 1970s and the modern replacement has been hollowed out by competition from supermarkets.

It will never be Spitalfields but that kind of community led, flexible smaller scale independent business retail would both pull people in and boost small business.

My mum ( no longer alive ) never learnt to drive , but she could get a bus into her town , have a wander around the shops and a coffee in Debenhams or M & S .

Do her shopping in Tesco or Sainsburys and get a taxi home.

These days with all those types of shops gone , what are the older generation expected to do ?

They can't get to these out of town places and even for younger people they don't have ' the feel ' of having a day / afternoon out at a vibrant , buzzy shopping centre.

I think the most viable solution is active town planning to make town centres smaller, with (depending on the community) pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, soft play, GPs, Community centres and some shops stationed there - so there is a community heart

But it’s going to be scaled down. Doing your main shop on the high st is not coming back

I buy directly from 'makers' eg Etsy, so no need to go into an actual shops.
I buy clothes online for kids etc, the postie delivers them and I can do my shopping from home at midnight if I want to.
I remember as a child walking around the shops with my parents on a Saturday but I think most people don't do this anymore and on Sundays nothing used to be open, so no staff wages, energy bills etc had to be paid.

Is the death of the high street a bad thing?
Multiple cinemas went when television became more common.
Churches are closing as fewer people attend and you can live stream churches and watch a service while you do the ironing.
Video stores went as we got BBC i-player, Netflix etc.
Pubs change into foodie places as going out just for a drink is no longer the norm.
Garden centres are more about the cafe than the plants these days. I can have a tree delivered to my house!
Things change.

@OtterTails I think your home town is very close to where I live. I think the issues affecting Wigan and B are very specific to those former mill towns outside Manchester. Funnily enough prices are unusually high here probs due to the decent access to the motorway and the fact that there are some very desirable suburbs on the edge of really pretty countryside.

Mine too.. but my area is quite affluent and I’m guessing yours is too?

Public transport is a hassle as well. Trains are typically unreliable, expensive and overcrowded. Getting cars into a city centre is worse and at least the bigger cities are still thriving in terms of busy city centres.

I think nowadays you need town/city centre living (a lot of residential development) and a thriving university to keep a strong town centre. That also keeps the hospitality going.

Then there's added extras like retail/commercial/tourism which a town needs at least one to be doing well.

Ifailed so many people are addicted to their cars. My neigbours drive to the town centre. It's less than one mile. I manage to walk it, go to the gym and carry food shopping back.

The charges for parking are to cover much more than their own upkeep I’m sure, but there should be a better balance. A friend went to our local City yesterday to drop off large items at the charity furniture store - it cost £7.00 for 28 minutes parking. That is insane. It definitely puts people off going in to the City. It’s not even like we have good public transport, services have been cut all over the place - two villages have had their bus service completely removed, I have no idea how people without cars in those places are managing. On the wider subject of why the town centres are dying, here it’s got a lot to do with the rents of shop units. The Church owns a lot of them and although independent shops do open, they often close down very soon after as the costs are unsustainable. So now, in a world heritage site, we have an area around the Cathedral with empty, derelict looking shop fronts. Beggars belief.

The major cities are okay. The likes of Manchester/Leeds/Liverpool/Newcastle/Birmingham/Bristol. It's more the towns and cities around it that struggle.

Absolutely Parking Charges are essentially another way of raising funds for councils.
I could see the point when town centres were busy places and they were trying to encourage people to use public transport.

But the town planners have gone down the out of town everything route so made cars essential.
Public transport doesn't really work when people need to get bus from home into town and a second bus to out of town. Especially if getting from home to out of town can be done in 20mins by car.

Me getting to work by 2 buses would take 1.5-2hrs - its a 15-20min drive!

Like the OP, I am in the North West. Also in Greater Manchester, in Bury.
In contrast, though, our town centre is thriving. I am 15 minutes walk from the town centre and walk in most days. I usually get the bus home if I have a lot of shopping.
There are three retail parks here but they are on the edge of the town centre. They include two supermarkets (Tesco and Asda) as well as all the other usual retail park retailers., Many people park at the retail parks and walk into the town centre to shop there. However there is a reasonably priced car park next to the indoor shopping centre as well.
There are 400 apartments in the town centre too.
M&S is thankfully very busy here; which is probably because there is so much else going on. We also have an award winning market which brings in visitors from all over. There are often as many as 18 coaches arriving on market days and the visitors shop in the other shops as well as the market.
The council have been forward thinking, looking to the future and acknowledging that less small retail units are required and plans are currently to build more apartments in place of part of the shopping centre.
The bus and tram services to and from neighbouring areas are well used by commuters and shoppers alike.
Within the square mile town centre we have 24 hour gyms, tourist attractions such as a steam railway, museums, cinema and theatre as well as pubs, bars and restaurants. Of course the success of the town centre means big names stay. When Debenhams closed Peimark moved in.

I quite agree. Our town centre used to have a biscuit factory and a secondary school bang in the middle. Then they both got turned into shopping centres in the 80s, thrived in the 90s and then closed.

Our town centre is dying too. Many local people seem to think it’s only a problem our town has, and blame it on immigrants.

Ours is odd though. The absolute centre has pretty much died but the surrounding streets are doing well. We have a couple of streets that are full of independent shops and cafes.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do think that they need to focus on entertainment like restaurants and bars. We have a town square with an empty shop on the corner. Restaurant chains try to move in but the owner of the building, who lives in the UAE, won’t allow alcohol to be sold there.

Life has changed but we expect the town centres/high streets to stay the same.

Who has time to go to the butchers, the bakers, whilst working full time? Supermarkets are a convenience and we live in a society that crave convenience.

In our town there are shops closing most days to be replaced by hairdressers, bakery chains or coffee shops. However try and get a coffee before 8am, or after 4pm and it’s impossible. Local “gift emporium” opens at 10am, again closes at 4pm - often has notices up on Facebook that they have decided not to open today. After a few occasions of trying to shop local and turning up to closed shops, I just decided it’s easier to order online to the convenience of delivering to my own home.

When I travel to the our closest city, the car parks are full, places to eat are full, pavements are bustling - this can be on a Tuesday after work or a Sunday day out. People choose to spend their money where and how they want to - most now choose not to do it in depressing run down towns.

The trams that link Manchester and surrounding suburban areas are a great benefit; more cities should adopt trams/metro/underground in my opinion, although I appreciate it's a very long term investment given costs.

Parking charges are all well and good, but they need to be worth people's while or nobody's going to pay them - especially if there's a free alternative elsewhere.

Our town has one (tiny) free council car park that's available 24/7.Then we have a supermarket carpark that's also free - but it has a two hour limit and is a bit of a distance from the town centre, so not ideal for elderly or disabled shoppers.

Street parking used to be free for everyone but nowadays you can only park for an hour (with a disc) before you have to move your car or risk a £35 fine. An hour is no amount of time so of course nobody bothers anymore.

My local town centre is dead.
At one time it was thriving with stores of every description, from big department stores such as Debenhams and Alders, along with smaller stores where you could buy anything from a new dress to knitting wool.
We had a large market that also sold everything and anything, as well as a large indoor market.
All gone now, replaced with charity shops, takeaways, vape shops etc.
We have lots of buses frequently going into town from the early hours until turned midnight, but the fares are expensive at almost £6 each, and the car parking is expensive too, so we don't bother going.

Our medium-sized town centre is dismal. All the character and history wiped away. No butchers, delis, the only 'bakers' are Greggs and Wenzels, no independent shops, cafes etc, just chains, charity shops and vape shops. The once-thriving market is now a few stalls selling cheap rubbish. I go there once or twice a year and hate it more each time - it feels like I'm watching the town slowly die!

However, a 15 minute drive and there is a choice of pretty, thriving small towns with lots of independent shops, businesses and cafes, bustling with life. They aren't tourist towns, there just seem to be some places that have found that sweet spot to make it work.

If I look at other European countries, like France, who still has thriving town centres, I’d say the issue is poverty.

Plain and simple.

When people don’t have money, they don’t buy.
Our wages have stagnated since 2010 whilst prices have increased… leaving people with little choice tbh. You won’t go and spend your weekend shopping just for the sake of it if you have little spare money.
Instead you’ll be looking for either bargains (see the rise of Vinted) or value for money or choice. None if that is available in the High Street due to cost (of renting prémices). If it’s to buy something from a well known branch that could have bought on their internet website, why loose time, effort and money to get to a town centre (or even a shopping mall)