The human factor on the high street
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Version 0 of 1. I’d like to say that I don’t shop online but then I’d be lying through my teeth. I bid and sell at a terrific rate and with every click, wave goodbye to the shops I worked in as a teenager. Online shopping has systematically destroyed the high street – as we all know, it’s easy to bin your principles in favour of Amazon when you’re skint – so it is interesting that a recent survey by Experian showed that the high street was clawing back in its own, unique way. According to the study, while “regular” businesses are on the decline, the number of “alternative” businesses, like tattoo parlours and health clubs, has increased. From my experience (two tattoos and counting! A gym membership I don’t really use!), aside from the obvious difference in service, the main discrepancy between these and, say, my daily experience in Tesco, is the human interaction. It’s tricky to get a tattoo without talking to someone and to me, this boom suggests that aside from a peaking demand in ink, perhaps we’re craving something more than consumerism from our high streets. As someone who grew up in the countryside, the social aspect of a high street (or village green) was something I missed when I moved to London. We had village pubs, village shops, parks. We congregated and dossed about with penny sweets and Panda pop. Everyone knew everyone. Di in the shop had a spare set of our keys. For some urban businesses – new and old – if staying the same is impossible, the answer has been to adapt. The Empty Shops Network calls this hybrid retail, the idea that social enterprises – from pop-ups to community centres to shops which are more than just shops – can and should evolve, reimagining the way we shop and interact with one another. In order to survive, shops and businesses need to offer something that can’t be found online or in shopping centres. Gentrification might be moving at a rate of knots but so, it seems, is our collective nostalgia and a desire for more than just shopping. Maybe by harnessing the latter, and making it work for the former, businesses and communities can coexist. I live in a rarefied area (Hackney) which I realise is an open goal when it comes to some new businesses. Take the shop round the corner from my flat. It was a Turkish grocery store, and as gentrification swept through here circa 2011, closure seemed imminent. But it adapted and now houses a community centre for holistic services and yoga, and a cafe. I can still bankrupt myself on organic milk and posh avocados, but do so in a far less impersonal way which mitigates the financial blow. There are regulars. We say hello in the queue for a coffee. It’s not a tattoo parlour, but it is a community-geared hub. This may sound as if the shop buckled under the force of gentrification, and I am in no way suggesting gentrification is a positive thing. With development, buildings are sold off, rent goes up and people are forced out. The disenfranchised are disengaged. A shopkeeper with a desire for creative expansion is one thing; a group of city boys with a desire to rebuild is another entirely. But at the end of the day, it was a case of fight or flight and this shop, redefined, is now making a killing. Another example is the betting shop down the road which recently hung a sign in the window saying “We’re always up for a chat in here” – the idea being that it’s “an experience”. Agreed, this is a savvy marketing scheme designed to encourage new clientele, but the idea that a betting shop is more than a betting shop – somewhere to hang out – feels like a positive (if idealistic) concept. After all, they’re arguably cornerstones of communities. It’s yet to be seen whether Hackney residents will be in the betting shop, making small talk by the TV screens. Historically, or snobbishly perhaps, we associate betting shops with poverty so it’s interesting to see an attempt to adapt quite so dramatically. The problem is that you can’t halt development. But if you can change how it manifests itself then surely that’s the lesser of two evils. If nothing else, this is a key sign that local communities are trying to make development work for them. And in both cases, abandonment is a far worse prospect. |