"The high street’s back in business: There's life-after-death for Britain's busiest streets"

Link to Daily Telegraph

"[Nowadays,] so great are the countervailing forces, that only so much can be done to revive retail, and restoring vibrancy to the high street may mean going back to the future. Segregated shopping parades are relatively new, set – literally – in stone by the zoning policies of post-war planners.

"For most of human history, town centres have been far more eclectic – and exciting – places where people have lived, worked, sought information and entertainment, learnt skills, and exchanged experiences as well as shopped.

" 'Re-imagining the high street' – to use a phrase from the New Economics Foundation – is catching on all over the country. This week, the London Assembly’s planning committee completed top-level hearings on how to do this for the capital’s town centres."

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Link to web site

The Guardian:
"As well-known stores hit the buffers, towns realise they must adapt or die"

"Those who hold the internet and the economy solely responsible for the much-pronounced death of the British high street are missing the point: the patient has been ailing for decades.

"Matt Piner, research director at the retail analysis and consulting agency Conlumino, says:

"We are in a recession, and that has proved a catalyst to the process but that's what it is: a catalyst. It's not the cause, and there has been a very long-term transference of spend away from town centres and towards, firstly supermarkets and out-of-town retail parks and shopping malls, and then, obviously, online.

I think that it's brought into focus a lot more, when you see these big names that everyone knows disappearing from the high streets, but there has been a gradual flow over the last five or 10 years, of retailers downsizing."