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Can shopping centres be used to regenerate cities?
07 November 2008
Yes, directly and as a catalyst, says Hammerson’s director of retail development Robin Dobson, but architect Ptolemy Dean prefers a return to traditional streets
'Yes'
Hammerson director of retail development
Of course. They can be both regeneration schemes themselves and a catalyst for other non-retail regeneration projects.
Traditionally, these developments might have only been about retail provision, but there is a very different approach now. The industry has moved on substantially in the past five years.
Retailers and users are demanding public spaces, civic streets and squares in new developments. The internal agenda has become truly external, moving the focus away from controlled environments towards outside spaces and places.
New developments are creating a sense of place which is a natural extension to the city, not just a retail scheme, and through it, restoring and creating civic pride.
We have created destinations to get people back into city centres that were previously underused, with a rich mixture of retail and leisure that caters for the widest range of people, as well as offices, hotels and residential.
It isn’t just about building, it’s about complete physical and social engagement with local communities and the city to create sustainable regeneration projects in the widest sense.
We are creating a catalyst for the whole city — so we’re talking about getting investment, as well as people, back into cities. We’ve seen it with the opening of the Bullring and its positive effect on Birmingham; in Bristol, we have created over 4,000 retail and leisure jobs; and it’s early days, but we believe Cabot Circus and Highcross in Leicester have already created real opportunities.
'No'
Ptolemy Dean Architects
It is depressing to find people who still think the best way to regenerate a town is to plonk a shopping centre in it.
Monolithic town centre shopping redevelopment began its damaging rampage through Britain’s towns and cities in the sixties and seventies. The large shop floorplates obliterated old street plans and, with their accompanying car parks, survive through their connection to feeder roads and the congestion that follows.
The encircling margin of service access yards creates no-go areas for pedestrians, and as no one lives in a shopping centre, they shut out the local community, especially at night. Chain stores prevail, uniformed guards patrol and one place looks like another.
By the early eighties, shopping centres had gone out of fashion. The traditional mixed functions of a town centre as a living place with local pubs and parks were just the sort of local character that we were beginning to value. But development is turning once again against the old town centres.
Shopping centres certainly provide jobs and activity, but they do so at the expense of virtually everything else, rather in the way that a forest planted only with conifers will sterilise the ground around it.
They suck the life out of the shopping areas nearby, creating a much larger regeneration challenge in their wake. Drive past the enormous Westfield shopping centre in West London in a few months’ time, and doubtless the process of decline will have begun.
Readers' comments
Public spaces, civic streets and squares? Try exercising your right to free speech by starting a protest in one of these shopping centres, to see how public these spaces really are.
Having seen Birmingham devastated in the 1960's and the demise of some wonderful Victorian buildings, the central Library for instance, I am appalled that every city and small town I visit seems to still worship at the shrine of the 'shopping centre'. You can now stand in the high street of any sized town and not have a clue as to where you are. Chain stores pop up everywhere in different sizes but turn all our towns into clones. I now live in Lancaster and have already witnessed the loss of many restoreable buildings. The sense of a long established centre of trade and industry with stone sett streets, warehouses and small workshop units is steadily being eroded. The latest horror is the threat of a major shopping centre precinct which will effectively move the real centre of the city to another spot, causing the original centre to degenerate and die. Shopping centres clearly cause increased traffic, and a general loss of identity to any town or city and I am totally opposed to such developments. Thank goodness for the likes of Ptolemy Dean who talks sense and is prepared to stand up and make his views known.
Why should a shopping centre regenerate a city? A shopping centre would just be the easiest way to make money, jobs and motivate people to spend the spare time going shopping following a consumeristic culture. I think Architecture has a strong social role. I live closed to Finchley Road, and to be honest I would prefer to have a big piazza with cultural centers, cinemas, concert halls, than the O2 Centre as it is. Spaces need to be considerate in their differences and the soul needs to come out in a regeneration projects. It is not a solution to plonk a development out of context and making of the city a Las Vegas.
Spot on Ptolemy Dean. Dobson - shame on you, the same tired guff that has ruined too many cities in the past. Clone development shopping isn't the be all and end all of life, or it shouldn't be. (York are you listening? Centros is keen to spoil your historic city.) People can live without a Debenham's. Leisure? Don't make me laugh. A Vue cinema, thus rendering the existing ones obsolete. Chain caffs. And as for 'public' squares - arid places policed by security guards, as they are not, as pointed out by Richard Arnold, actually public. Local authorities hand over vast tracts of land to be privatised. In return they get a bribe - some public enhancement (Carlisle got a library in exchange for the ghastly Lanes mall) and a piece of 'public art'. Too often, interesting historic buildings and spaces are wiped out - they tell us it's 'progress' and it's aided and abetted by 'Historic Buildings Consultants' who are in the pay of the developer. All of course masterminded by the PR departments of these mega developers, and skewed consultations which 'prove' how much 'leakage' there is to other places. Now indeed it is the turn of smaller places to be fingered by developers, whose interest is only in making cash. Sadly, they seem able to fool some councils most of the time. Yes Lancaster is a case in point. Look at the SAVE Britain's Heritage website which has an e-report of the proposals, and a link to the Its Our City website, and weep. www.savebritainsheritage.org
Please don't destroy the character of Lancaster's centre. In the current context of recession and global warming it would be spectacularly irresponsible to create a towncentre which is not only heartless but unnecessary. In the 21st century we have to think about development differently.
May I also thank Ptolemy Dean for speaking out against the proposed Centros development in Lancaster. From the day Centros swept into town and seduced Lancaster City Council, both members and officers, there has been no dissent from within the council apart from the Green Councillors.Chief Planning Officer Dobson was publicly seen to be a Centros "champion", but was not in attendance during the Planning Committee meetings held to discuss the Centros proposals.At the Planning Commitee, again it was only the Green councillors who questioned the Officers Report. Our local civic society actually clapped every spokesperson from Centros, including the Centros PR man, knowing full well that if the proposals were accepted there would be large scale demolition of a conservation area. Whlist objectors spoke, councillors were seen doodling, nodding off,whispering to each other and at the end objectors were described as a vociferous minority who obviously didn't work (unlike the majority who supported the plans but were too busy to attend the town Hall for two days because they WORKED). If it wasn't for the strong support from concerned Lancastrians and objections from national bodies such as SAVE, The Victorian Soc,The Georgian Group and EH I would despair. On the day I read that Bath may lose its World Heritage Site status because of large scale development Ptolemy's words ring so true.
Does anybody really 'Live' in clone town? Consider great places in larger cities - places like Temple Bar in Dublin, Neals Yard in London, The Jewish Quarter in Prague, Nanshi in Shanghai, NY's upper east side, great swathes of Budapest....... places where there are people, schools, independent businesses, housing, hotels, bars, cafes newsagents, art galleries. A diverse, inclusive, richer,creative, imaginative, prosperous series of neighbourhoods without defaulting to the corporate blandness of clonetown anywhere. I live in Lancaster. I moved (with my family - some time ago) from a clonetown for all that was good about Lancaster. I'm now faced with the prospect of watching as its soul is sucked out. It's very depressing - I wish people who 'served' us on the council had a little more imagination.
In Lancaster I've found a town I like that is useable by people walking, cycling and driving. It has business, nature, music, art, universities and lots of people in it who are committed to keeping it people-sized. Then along comes big money who care not at all for anything but making more money, and persuade the town council that it will be a good idea to rent some of the town to them for 250 years so that they can flatten it, put up one huge out of proportion building that nobody wants and a huge carpark! How did they persuade them I want to know? What a stupid idea. Does anybody want to stay here while half the town and its main roads are under reconstruction? Will there be an exodus afterwards? I won't be staying if this goes ahead. WH
The new Westfield shopping centre is a wonderful experience. It far more pleasant that battling the elements on a wintery day.
Well done Ptolemy Dean. There is nothing like wandering around individual streets rather than the faceless format of shopping centres. York has retained its individuality to its credit. You only have to look at the new Cabot Circus in Bristol which has to be one of the worst amalgamations of architects egos in the country. It is hideous.
England is fast becoming a shopping city like Singapore! What a shame!