Book Review

HOW TO SAVE OUR TOWN CENTRES: A radical agenda for the future of High Streets
Julian Dobson, Policy Press, 2015. ISBN: 9781447323938

Empty shops. Charity shops. Betting shops. The death and decay of our High Streets has been troubling us for at least seven years. Longer, if you live in areas like the coalfield villages in the Welsh valleys and others north of Watford. Julian Dobson has written a great book here on what has gone wrong and, more importantly, what can we now do to rejuvenate our town centres and High Streets. This is long overdue, and vital to our quality of living.

His experience and knowledge shine through in this clearly and carefully written book. For me, anyone can catch my attention when they acknowledge Jane Jacobs and her thinking on street design, and Julian doesn’t just quote her, he understands her. And though he is very measured in his writing, you do get an occasional glimpse behind the curtain. Folk working for firms of High Street lawyers might want a stiff drink before reading pages ten and eleven. And a similar caution later for university library manager friends in Sheffield.

Julian covers the ground thoroughly, reminding us of the pioneers and initiatives which still hold lessons for the future. He rightly cautions us against trying to make our High Streets into unsustainable copies of a nostalgic past. Perhaps here his biggest contribution to our understanding how our bad our High Streets have become is his forensic analysis of the British commercial property professions. There is a lot of fresh work here, and with plenty of research leads for others to usefully explore. The professional tension between risk-aversion and promoting bubble economics is laid bare.

He concludes this fine book with a section on what can be done today to improve our High Streets. These suggestions are very practical and pragmatic. Julian resists a simple solution, whether it would be a new law or a new technical fix. So there should be no excuses for waiting for someone or something else – anyone concerned with their High Street can start straight away with these improvement ideas. It is a collective enterprise, going as he says from ‘me towns’ to ‘we towns’.

I really hope that there is a second edition of this book, and soon. It would have another chapter— on how it all started getting better. Julian would be too modest to add his influence within such a chapter, but we would know.

And if I can speculate for a moment. Things only seem impossible until someone makes them happen. Cities were in decline not long ago. But consider people like Tony Wilson and Tom Bloxham. Tom was a young man starting out in business who saw that, in his own words, old buildings were cheaper to buy per square foot than carpet. Now thousands of property companies have followed the lead of pioneers in urban regeneration such as Urban Splash. It set a new normal. And if Tom rewired urban property, Tony rewired the urban brain for a new generation. Many, many helped – like a town centre, a city is a collective enterprise – but someone had to open the door.

Julian rightly describes how some areas have taken these changes to an unsustainable level, often with a mistaken belief that retail-led regeneration will solve every town centre problem. ‘Boom goggles’ he calls them. Or ‘cargo cults’, as anthropologists would describe them.

But I quietly suspect that someone, probably young, possibly with a background in video blogging, skateboarding and graphic books, even now is sitting with their mate in some greasy spoon cafe in Collyhurst and saying, “those empty shops and stuff, you know what…”

And so a door opens on our next new normal.

In California the owner of a firm supplying power wheelchairs paid for by the Medicare and Medi-Cal funds, was convicted on 20 March 2015 of fraud of $3.5million (1). She had been paid almost $2million, and sentencing is set for June 2015.

Fraud within public funds is not new. In the UK the programme of Individual Learning Accounts had to be abruptly closed and abandoned because of fraudulent claims by criminals using powerful computers. They searched for weaknesses in the system’s data and then made hundreds of automatic false claims on each ‘find’, each claim for over £150.

In the USA the authorities are making it known that all financial claims are now monitored by anti-fraud algorithms which look for known patterns of criminal behaviour. Clearly these algorithms are not themselves in the public domain, but common sense suggests that any statistically significant ‘spikes’ in the claims will raise a red flag.

But more important than money is life itself. The same algorithms can also be used to interrogate health data as well as health funding.

Harold (Fred) Shipman, the mass murderer, killed patients at an estimated one a month for 25 years, mostly elderly women living alone. “By 1998 … a local taxi driver, who often ferried old ladies around, noticed that they seemed to die shortly after seeing Shipman. Linda Reynolds, a nearby GP, noticed that his patients were dying three times more frequently than hers.” (2) The subsequent Inquiry determined that he murdered 210 people, plus a possible 45 others.

The Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal of appalling local health care was also first detected by patients’ relatives who knew that something was wrong. In retrospect, the data told the story in terms of falsely coding people’s deaths. The senior managers in charge at the time tried to “explain away” these sudden lurches in unlikely deaths, but the relatives’ stories and the data supported each other and the truth emerged.

Back to funding in the UK, and at a more routine level thankfully, we have the recent convictions for fraud by some A4E staff making false claims to the Department for Work and Pensions and to the European Social Fund.

Auditors are usually well aware that – if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is suspect. Such as projects which achieve all their outputs and outcomes, with everything spot-on the original profile, along with wonderfully neat files all signed in the same shade of ink. Hmmm.

It might not be as high-tech as super-computer algorithms, but auditors as well as machines can know which trends or characteristics in the data will need further investigation.

(1) http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/owner-medical-equipment-supply-company-convicted-35-million-medicare-and-medi-cal-fraud

(2) Forensics: an anatomy of crime, Val McDermid, 2014, p107.

The recent court case on fraud within A4E involved both EU and UK public funds, and I suspect came to light following a rigorous ESF project visit to test compliance. Fraudulent documents is a very serious finding, rightly leading to criminal charges. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/30/a4e-welfare-work-company-workers-sentenced-fraud

This piece was written as a response to the consultation for the Castlefield Regeneration Framework in Manchester:

***

This response is to suggest three specific areas in which it would be useful to be more specific within the framework document: on the residential offer, on quality open space, and on connectivity.

The draft framework is explicit on the benefits of a height and massing hierarchy for new buildings in proximity to the rail viaducts, but other aspects of the framework are perhaps quite generic and could be further detailed to even better capture the opportunities of the area’s key characteristics.

In general, the Castlefield area offers an experience of changes in height, levels and scale which is not to be found to the same impressive extent elsewhere in the city centre. This unique physicality should be brought to the fore, celebrating its particular expression within the wider urban form. The rail viaducts in particular are monumental in scale, and it is not surprising that the middle area is widely used for filming due to its cinematic scale. However, the wider area has experienced less renown with a predominance of lower value uses which would normally be expected to be found beyond the inner ring road and not within a city core.

Green Infrastructure

The two rivers and the canals provide a variety of water courses and frontages which are difficult to find elsewhere in the conurbation core, combined in a manner which complements rather than copies Salford Quays, to which it is connected. The framework should use this feature as the defining basis for the area’s green infrastructure, including better linear riverside connectivity and quality open spaces reaching into the core. The schematic form of the draft framework is light on this aspect, with little shown beyond generalised boundary planting. The reference to 35 central parks is not a strong linkage, and within the framework discussions there would be benefit in exploring mechanisms to achieve quality open spaces which share the uplift in land values equitably between the various interests. Without a mechanism such as a trust or a joint venture, the provision of quality open space risks being borne unequally.

As well as green infrastructure being a deeper feature of the framework and feeding into quality open space and public realm, consideration should be given to the use of the metal unused rail viaduct next to the Metrolink route towards Cornbrook. Whether this should be open to the public would depend on a strategy to manage the area and any attendant risks, but even keeping it closed to public access it could nevertheless be planted in a manner similar to the High Line park in west New York, which was also a disused elevated railway track. Such planting could be within large containers to protect the structural integrity of the viaduct, using sculptural shrubbery with high-colour flowering shrubs to make an impact at a distance.

Connectivity

The linkages between the site and the Castlefield-Deansgate Metrolink station are mentioned but could be amplified, and could include an iconic feature which would define the experience of the area. The walking route from Metrolink, other than at road level across Deansgate, is through a high-level car park which spans Deansgate and enters Castlefield, walking to arrive at a metal stairwell or a lift, dropping considerably to ground level.

To the side of this metal stairwell, the suggestion is to build a skywalk which would take pedestrians at height into the area, either under or over the rail viaducts, to a destination on Liverpool Road next to the Museum of Science and Industry – MOSI. The design of the skywalk would be slim, tall and sleek, undulating as it approached MOSI. It would probably pass under the Manchester-Preston rail viaduct, mindful of the clearances needed for future rail overhead wire electrification if the walkway passed above. In concept it borrows for pedestrians from the Millau roadbridge in southern France, and would especially define the area in the minds of children visiting MOSI by tram.

Demographic Opportunities

The following discussion note was prepared in October 2009 and this framework provides a key opportunity to develop the residential offer of city centre living in a manner which is attractive to a wider and economically sustainable demographic.

Urban niche market opportunities for the active retired

In the field of urban regeneration there are discussions about sustainable future uses for some city-centre apartment schemes. In the last five years the growth in student renting as a niche market has been helpful, and this note is to suggest that a similar niche market could be developed for active older people, with some outline thoughts as follows, using the Castlefield area in Manchester as a case study.

Castlefield is often used as a film set, being an urban quarter with sensitive, historic and strategic features including Roman and industrial revolution connections. It has canal waterfronts, monumental transport viaducts, a YHA café, YMCA fitness centre and swimming pool, a major museum nearby plus the city centre core within walking distance – with close walkable access to the Concert Hall, Art Gallery, Royal Exchange and other theatres, Deansgate and King Street for premier shopping as well as main brand ‘metro’ supermarkets and the whole range of city centre attractions.

There could well be an opportunity in places such as this to be re-marketed with developments aimed at aspirational retired professionals looking to downsize, to let go of the car and drive less often (cars can be hired by the hour now), and to relocate their home in order to easily maintain their access to the prime leisure and cultural offers of the city centre while living in a quieter urban quarter with a waterfront or similar advantages. The fact that some developments are currently only built to shell allows for a re-thinking of some of the internal features. People with retirement income are less affected by the recession, with their purchasing power not dependent on current employment.

The internal fit-out could be informed by the Lifetime Homes standard. This might involve time costs in changed designs and drawings, but the property’s improved marketability will be worth the effort, as well as keeping a work flow for in-house design teams. More amenity space would also be attractive to older purchasers. There is sometimes adjacent underused land such as former car showroom sites which might make well-designed public and/or private open space.

The benefits of active frontages at the ground level are well documented, and a mix of small retail plus health care could be attractive and viable. In particular many city centres still need to build up the social infrastructure of GP or nurse-led health services. What could be key for prospective purchasers, along with covenants on occupation, will be visible, proactive and reassuring property management such as those with a concierge service.

October 2009 and March 2011

I heard this awful phrase yet again yesterday. The dear old Today programme on BBC Radio 4 were interviewing someone about why so few new houses are being built.

It could equally have been an interview about the shortage of affordable housing. Or even the reason why pop songs are not quite as catchy as they used to be, when we were young. Trains are running late? Well, you see, it is all because of delays in the planning system.

When journalists get trained, are they hypnotised? I wonder, because all you have to say to them is the trigger phrase – delays in the planning system – and they go all quiet and gormless.

So, what is going on here?

Firstly, we know that more houses receive planning permission than are ever built. Like land banks, there are permission banks. Sometimes these are speculative, where the land owner is trying to increase the value of their land by obtaining permission in advance. But just because you have permission to build a copy of the Eiffel Tower in Runcorn, doesn’t mean anyone else thinks they can make money from doing it.

Secondly, the planning system is quasi judicial, with expensive barristers for when the going gets tough. But it is administrative law, mostly going up the chain to Ministers rather than up to the courts. And there is an inequality of arms: the big firms can afford to pay more for barristers than can local authorities, and big firms can hold the threat of recovering costs if the local authority is judged to have been unreasonable in its denial of permission.

So, thirdly, local authorities fight the planning lawyers with bureaucracy. Which leads us to having 27 policy documents and investigations before you can build that wonderful copy of the Eiffel Tower.

But, fourthly, perhaps the biggest factor and by far the least talked about is: location, location, location.

Basically the posh councils have a problem. Everyone living there asks just two things: keep the schools decent and don’t build any new houses near us. But all the house builders want to build in these same posh areas because good location equals good money.

The not-posh councils don’t have this problem, and are often grateful for anything that comes their way, even if the quality is woeful. We have all been on trains or in cars, going past new houses at 50 miles an hour where it is painfully obvious they are far too small to live in, our slums of the future.

So, in a nutshell, delays in the planning system is often code for trying to get permission in the posh areas, often in or near the green belt, where the local voters are saying “no more” and the council they have elected is trying to defend the area from the lawyers of all comers with just a few forms, policies, processes, and ever more meetings.

And finally, I would suggest that a better line of interviewing would challenge such bald statements about delays with the deeper question: does what we are doing currently help in sustainable development, or is it a just a sideshow about money?

Journalists, please note.

The WordPress.com stats helper has prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here are some key points:

* This blog was viewed by 1,700 people in 42 countries, the largest number being from the UK, closely followed by USA and Canada.

* Most new readers found the blog on Facebook, then Twitter and thirdly LinkedIn.

* The most popular articles in 2014 were on the history of the disabled people’s movement, a new section added this year as the Kevin Hyett Archive.

* The third most read article in 2014 was over a year old, on ERDF and procurement.

Thank you.

There are four key messages connected with this new book on the welfare state, I suggest:

(1) the welfare state is more than the NHS,
(2) it started with radical writers well before 1948,
(3) middle class families receive state spending as much as poorer people, and (4) welfare and inequality are two sides of the same coin.

As said in The Guardian’s reviews of this new book – “Without state redistribution, inequality in Britain would no longer be on a European or even a North American scale: the gap in the UK’s private incomes would be right up at the top of the table, close to that in Chile.”

Full review of this book – http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/11/good-times-bad-times-john-hills-review-welfare-state-tom-clark

Buy now for Christmas!

In Delhi, 95% of women asked feel unsafe on public transport. In the USA, 80% of women surveyed have been harassed by a male stranger. Girls are known to use public parks far less than boys after the age of 9 years. There are many other examples of such Everyday Sexism in towns and cities, so it was good to read about the TRUST WOMEN international conference which took place this month, with lots of ideas and solutions in different settings around the world.

The growth of urbanisation and mega-cities means that more women than ever are living in cities, and especially in mega-cities. The challenge now is for us, men and women, to make these cities work for everyone, and not just for men. The conference covered many experiences and solutions already in place, and these are via the link below.

For me, if I was to highlight one point it would be – the importance of employing women in roles of authority to visibly manage public spaces, from tram inspectors to parks officers to visitor guides, and more. I feel we have gone a bit too far down the CCTV and gadgets route, and lost something of the human, the role model for girls walking to school, the ability to intervene, challenge and remove that urban sexism everyday.

Link: http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/women-friendly-cities-its-not-about-money-its-about-ideas/

I don’t normally paste other people’s stuff wholesale in a blog, but this speech below is exceptionally good:

Ursula K. Le Guin was honored at the National Book Awards tonight [19 Nov 2014] and gave a fantastic speech about the dangers to literature and how they can be stopped. As far as I know it’s not available online yet, so I’ve transcribed it from the livestream below. The parts in parentheses were ad-libbed directly to the audience, and the Neil thanked is Neil Gaiman, who presented her with the award.

She said:

“Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.

Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. (Thank you, brave applauders.)

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial; I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write. (Well, I love you too, darling.)

Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.

I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want—and should demand—our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

Thank you.”

Source: http://parkerhiggins.net/2014/11/will-need-writers-can-remember-freedom-ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards/

Reports today (9 Oct 2014) show that the loss of High Street shops in the first nine months of 2014 is over twice as large as in all of 2013.

My paper on Reinventing the High Street, written in 2009, suggests ways forward. https://tonybaldwinson.wordpress.com/2012/11/

Link to today’s report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29546101