Your piece on the DCLG’s interim policy paper The Future of High Streets (“Shops-to-homes bid could save high streets” News July 12) reflects both an encouraging and a worrying development.

Aldershot High Street.

Our research would in general support the report’s focus on the need to invest in and improve the diversity of uses on the UK high street, including allowing it to reduce its proportion of retail.

However, we would caution against any decision to allow housing to replace ground floor retail — losing the spatial continuity of “live” uses on either side of a street has the potential outcome of the centre withering over time due to the consequential decrease in footfall.

Such decisions require an urban designer’s understanding of issues such as streetscape and morphology to ensure that the land-use diversity and spatial accessibility that has allowed our high streets to sustain themselves over the past 150 years isn’t lost through aspatial decisions.

Laura Vaughan
Adaptable Suburbs, UCL

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