I must have had a crystal ball: My article from 2018 "How our High Streets will Change" is so on song.

I just have to republish this, my ambition for the High Street is so right. The article was called "Hunting and gathering is still here – just nowadays we pay for our prey." . . . so read on for the conclusion.

For the past two and a half million years we have been hunter-gatherers. We would go out equipped for hunting animals to eat, with spears, arrows and nets. We would gather nuts berries and greens with baskets and bags. 

But then we learnt to farm and to trade. Other people did the hunting and gathering…we bartered or exchanged money in return for fresh meat, fish, grain, vegetables and fruit. 

It wasn’t long before other traders brought things they had made to market…baskets, tools, weapons, furniture, products, things we needed, things we didn’t need, but wanted. Things we neither needed or wanted!

The retail economy was born. Shopping was with us.

Markets grew up in the centres of towns and villages. Traders flocked to them, knowing that they could sell their wares to the townspeople. Mobility was relatively limited, so only the rich could travel far for their goods. 

Canals and railways made dramatic differences to the goods we could buy. Eventually department stores flourished in town centres, and then came their successors: shopping centres. These were still generally in-town, accessible on foot for residents. The individual mode of transport, the car, became more generally available, and shopping centres went to the edge- or out-of-town, bringing about seemingly irreversible changes to our town centres.

It is true that many goods and services were better provided for by these edge-of-town ‘category killers’ and shops in town centres closed. This has been more of an obvious pattern in the US where the Wal-Mart, Costco and Kroger have killed town centre retail. 

In the UK names like Woolworths and BHS disappeared and House of Fraser is finding it difficult to retain its niche in the market*. (Since 2018 many more 'household' names have disappeared. Ed) We also lost local purveyors of quality products - to be replaced by charity shops, cafes, betting shops and boarded up units. The internet exasperated this erosion of the town centre and currently it’s affecting retail at both ends of the market. 

But a new realisation of retail positioning is dawning.  Shopping is either hunting or gathering. 

Hunting is fast, gathering is slow. 

Hunting for retail is about going out to find big-ticket items. Hunters look for fast moving animals and flashes of light. So to hunt for goods we’ll go to the big edge-of-town and out-of-town centres. This is where the activity always is. Now we’ll go to the West End for the movement, the colours, the lights and the hive of activity. Here the colours are brighter and adrenalin flows. “Here is where the bargains are!”

We’ll hunt for what we want, for ourselves or for presents. We might complete the purchase when we’re there if it’s a time sensitive item or we might shop around on the internet from an armchair. But we source the goods in a hunting frame of mind and that’s very different from gathering.

The local high street is the place for gathering, in both senses of the word. It’s being refocused on what we need on a day-to-day basis; food and drink for cooking, and services that the internet cannot provide such as hairdressing and nail bars, restaurants and bars, local cinema houses. We go to the high street to gather. Colours are more earthy and natural with greens and browns predominating. The pace is slower. We go to the high street to meet and greet our neighbours. As a locality we are known by name in the community that works there. We are a family again. The town centre is the place for gathering, both to satisfy our needs and to gather together.

For us, as placemaking designers, these two completely different frames of mind we have mean that we think about the destinations very differently. We are now able to name and brand according to the emotion of the audiences and leave behind the old-fashioned naming based on historical facts. Naming and brands relate to needs, wants and descriptors. The activity will be the descriptor. Food and drink venues will be like local larders. Talking and mixing will be back in fashion.

The high street must be reborn as community space. Streets will be pedestrianised, public realm improved and made personal. Yes, there will be some of the bigger well-known names in evidence but these will be more like pop-ups and dedicated to product launches to encourage us to go hunting or buy on the web. Shoppers will be encouraged to collect online purchases here, bringing life back and encouraging yet more gathering. (I certainly got it right! Crystal Balls DO work!. Ed)

Property values will be adjusted according to footfall rather than turnover. It will be up to the retailer to entice the passing shopper in and spend money. They will have to get more customer focused and provide what the audience needs and wants. In the same way the opening hours will have to properly adjust to the pedestrian traffic.

Some of this is already happening, but there is a long way to go. People should live in town centres, right there, in the middle. Homes of the elderly should be there, not scattered in suburbia. Architects, town planners, agents, councils and land owners must start thinking differently…collaboratively. For too long they have been fighting over the cake, but better to have a slice than no cake at all. 

Small Back Room thinks very positively about town centres. We are designers, we are optimists. Perhaps because we have no vested interests in them we are the very people to change opinions. So come on, everyone, stop looking to a past that will never return and let’s start building a new future for our town centres. Let the hunters hunt, and let the gatherers gather. Just make sure they gather in your town centre.  #myhighstreetmatters

John Rushton

[email protected] 020 7902 7600 www.smallbackroom.com

* Source BBC News January 2018

Small Back Room, Est 1977, are brand guardians and create the communications for Regent Street London, The Moor Sheffield, Royal Albert Dock Liverpool, Bon Accord Aberdeen, St Christopher’s Place London, Seven Dials London, with Marylebone Village and Harley Street Medical Area. In the UK we have been involved with over 160 retail based instructions . . . and several as far afield as Egypt, Turkey and Kzakhstan.