Town centre culture: shifts
“Concrete rest zones, urban space zones, Shoe Zones ”
This post is in flight.
Industrial heritage remains in the conciousness of communities. Public art sculptures installed on traffic islands, repurposes and provide a wink back in time to segments of mega-steel factories that once produces the ‘best steel in the world’ and employed millions of skilled workers all adhering to ‘working-class-time’ (WCT).
Steel zones to shoe zones
Steelworks, some of the largest in the world once stood where ‘brownfield’ sites are glossy shopping malls. The industrial machinery, manufacturing the rail lines of the world, steam trains and water boilers, titanic anchors and ships bows are often ‘repurposed’ into shopping centres, call centres, epicentres of consumerism and at the same time flattening the the town centres where societies once grew, families mingled and friendly, happy people actually were real.
White knuckle chuckle
It makes us chuckle the International Council of Shopping Centers has a new strapline; "Innovating Commerce Serving Communities" but forgets shopping centres are responsible for dividing communities. Often inaccessible to less-abled and transport links are poor. Traffic Congestion and pollution around the super mega shopping centres is unbearable.
Has anyone bothered to do or predict an impact assessment of pollution around the shopping centre from vehicle exhausts, secondary pollutants formed in the atmosphere, evaporative emissions from vehicles, and non-combustion emissions (e.g., road dust, tyre wear)?
The 21st century high street
Town centres are crime scenes. Lack of ambition driven by a total lack of reasonable investment for local communities to be a community. The very heart of a town, [the community] has all but disappeared. The government say shopping habits ‘have changed’. Of course they have. Business rates and taxation favours has choked the town centre trader and encouraged corporate shopping experiences away from the town square and into the out-of-town-indoor-shopping-centres. Oh the irony of the label [out-of-town-indoor-shopping-centres].
Today’s highstreets are littered with litter and littered with off-loaded public services
A list of a typical UK high street or main town centre shopping precinct:
Charity shops
Empty shops
Unemployed internet terminals
Drug and alcohol awareness hubs
Smoking cessation clinics
Mobile XRAY lorries
Library (closed)
Weight loss advice centres
Blood test tents
Standardised and therefore lacking character, the same brands appear at the indoor shopping cathedrals across the UK. How can this be! No independent shopkeepers, we see euro-wide brands assimilating the shopping experience, claiming to be a ‘friendly face on your highstreet’. Friendly faces are far and few. Floor walkers greeting shoppers upon entry to the slick entrance spaces skillfully designed to offload low quality (old tat) from the previous years stock. No one knows anyone. The concept of the shopkeeper is now a history lesson.
It’s a very anonymous experience getting lost in an indoor shopping centre.
