It’s Personal
Viele Faktoren – nicht nur das Einkaufen im Internet – sind die Ursache dafür, dass in Innenstädten immer mehr Geschäfte schließen. Dagegen muss etwas getan werden!
Elisabeth Ribbans on saving the high street
There is a famous line in Peter Pan that tells us: “Every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies,’ there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.” I feel like that every time I shop online — another high street store will die. Since I shop online quite often, the guilt is significant. Each week brings news of more shops closing on Britain’s high streets. Research published in April by Pricewaterhousecoopers (PWC) found that 2,481 banks and shops disappeared from Britain’s top 500 high streets in 2018. That’s 40 per cent more than in 2017 and the largest-ever yearly decline.
That can’t all be down to me, right?
No, not quite all. The reasons are various. Yes, we are shopping more via the internet. Britons spend more online than any other nation: £3,041 (€3,529) per head a year. This compares with £2,593 in the US and £1,403 in China, according to data from Search Laboratory.
It is also true that money is tight. Physical shops are more expensive to run and we have too many of them (perhaps twice as many as we need, according to Sir John Timpson, who published a report last year on the future of UK high streets). There are also a lot of out-of-town malls.
The death of the high street must be fought. High streets — in the local sense, rather than as a synonym for the sector — have been at the heart of our communities for centuries. They provide jobs close
to home and are a familiar place for us to interact with our neighbours. They are inclusive.
Once a week, I shop in our small nearby town and I’m practically in heaven. It has a bank, delicatessen, hardware store, electrical store, grocer, independent clothes shops and gift shop, two florists and even a clock-mender. I feel lucky. Elsewhere around the UK, there are now towns where a third of the shops are boarded up. They are ghost towns.
Experts see the answer in bringing more homes and offices into the centres, which makes great sense at a time when towns are empty while green fields are being covered in new houses — and in providing less traditional products. “The high street of the future will be a more diverse space, not solely dependent on stores,” says Lisa Hooker of PWC. “The analysis reflects this with the net growth of gyms and sports clubs, ice-cream parlours and cake shops, in addition to initiatives to bring more shared office spaces and homes into what were traditionally shopping areas.”
My commitment is to halve my online spending this year and check that nothing I click to buy is available locally. Of my last 20 orders, one fails the test. I should have spent that £50 on dog food at my local pet shop. I apologize and — before anything else bad happens — I do believe in fairies, too.