How can we save the high street?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/15/how-can-we-save-high-street

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Anna Minton: The community can drive alternative local economies

The boarded-up shops, pound shops and pawn shops of so many high streets reflect a landscape created by extreme capitalism which views place primarily as a product, from which to extract maximum profit. The consequence is that with the financial crisis, less profitable centres and businesses have collapsed. As high streets lie empty, disused shops and buildings are an unrivalled opportunity to start to build alternative local economies, based on alternative economic models.

Rather than an economy based on property finance, underpinned by enormous debt, a new genuinely productive economy based on making, caring and exchanging goods and services could create thriving high streets again. Youth services, libraries, creches and the like, which all face savage cuts, are obvious choices for empty premises. Jamie Oliver's "Ministry of Food", silly name notwithstanding, has seen the opening of kitchens offering cookery classes in high streets from Rotherham to Stratford.

There is no shortage of local community groups keen to spearhead alternative forms of development on the high street. The problem is that head-in-the-sand local authorities, desperate to return to "business as usual", do not want to work with them. In Edinburgh a powerful coalition of local groups put forward a plan for an empty canal site but found it hard to get a hearing from the council. In Barnet, the community activists who reopened Friern Barnet Library are fighting eviction proceedings by the council.

Thriving high streets based on alternative economic models are what local people want. Unfortunately politicians don't seem to be listening.

• Anna Minton is the author of Ground Control

David Skelton: Niche shops and housing would bring vibrancy

If high street shops don't adjust they risk becoming worn-out shells. Indeed, plenty of high streets have already become tired. The main shopping street in my home town of Consett, dominated by bargain shops and empty properties, is replicated in high streets up and down the country.

The high street can change and rediscover some vibrancy. To do this it must adapt to consumer behaviour, with more niche stores and "click and collect" shops. But high streets must also become vibrant and welcoming places for people to visit. A modern high street should provide ample facilities for childcare and good social facilities such as restaurants and coffee shops and it must have a sense of a community where people live and interact with each other as well as shop.

Rather than having a high street scarred by empty shops, local authorities should change the use of those properties so that they can become residential, attracting first-time buyers especially who are finding it increasingly difficult to get a foot on the housing ladder. Their spending power might also attract independent retailers to move into the area.

The demise of many retailers such as Woolworths and HMV is a sign that many retailers simply can't keep up with the pace of change. To survive and to blossom in the future, high streets need to adapt to modern-day society and become places to live in, shop in and visit. The alternative is a high street with more boarded-up properties and less soul.

• David Skelton is deputy director of Policy Exchange

Richard Sennett: Subsidise to create a mixed-use environment

The high streets of 50 years ago were all about retail commerce. Small manufacturers and craftsmen had gone elsewhere in the post-war city; planners – those bureaucratic bogeymen – thought to make the centre of the city tidy. But the high street inevitably then became vulnerable to an even more efficient, mono-functional retail space, the shopping mall. High streets "fought back" by imitating these out-of-town competitors; Oxford Street became a poor cousin to Bluewater. Of course the law of the capitalist jungle ruled: chains like HMV paid bigger rents than little shops, but the character and environmental quality of the central city eroded.

I am convinced we can reverse this trend, first by making high streets more truly mixed in use. They should house elder-care centres and medical clinics, government bureaus helping the public and pop-up music or art venues. A vibrant high street must be more than a place in which to shop. But, equally, the capitalistic beast must be fed. Horrific to our Conservative masters as it may be, the state should pay commercial rents to locate its own activities on high streets, and it should give small businesses tax breaks, even special loans, to allow them to return and survive as high street enterprises.

If we think of high streets as a "commons", which like the old agricultural commons knit the entire community together, we'd think about them as places, in sum, which the community should support. Which means subsidy.

• Richard Sennett is a professor of sociology at LSE and professor of social science at MIT

Chuka Umunna: Help bring online trade to communities

This is a tough time for high street retailers, caught in a pincer between weak demand and the impact of technological change. HMV joins Jessops and Comet as household names that have gone in to administration in the last 12 months, alongside over 50 other major retailers, with over 50,000 jobs being affected.

In the short term, we need real action from government to get the economy moving again. In the longer term, we need a proper industrial strategy for retail to promote multichannel retailing, combining online trade with vibrant high streets at the heart our communities.

There are retailers successfully combining conventional and online retail, like Argos or John Lewis. Collection doesn't just have to be from stores – Post Offices and other community sites could become pick-up points. We also need a more level playing field between the taxation and rates applying to conventional stores and those applying to online sellers.

More and more department stores are acting as the shop window for a range of retailers now, using space more efficiently to recreate the feel of the local market, creating new market opportunities for the small and the niche.

Shopping in the future can become an experience where conventional retailers can complement the success of online retailing. Government needs to work in partnership with the sector to help make this a reality.

• Chuka Umunna is the shadow business secretary and the Labour MP for Streatham

Emma Jones: Big business could give pop-ups a hand up

Last year may have been a terrible year for big retailers, but it was a record year for British start-ups. Our local high streets are in trouble, and yet what small business wouldn't give their right arm to trade in their own communities, generating sales and brand awareness?

The irony is almost too painful to behold. In our ideal world you'd find small businesses filling empty shops on a pop-up basis, working with other start-ups to offer the British consumer a different shopping experience – and the opportunity to support British enterprise.

We'd like to see big businesses getting involved to help out small ones, to help give start-up retailers the chance to offer a cleverly designed shopping environment, as well as funding and expertise.

We're busy trying to roll out a model exactly like this called PopUp Britain. So far we've had help from John Lewis and funding from accountancy software and mobile payments firm Intuit and we've helped 70 British businesses get on to the high street.

We want to help many more, for it is they who will breathe life back into the high street.

• Emma Jones is founder of Enterprise Nation, an online network for small businesses