Top 5 ways to kill or boost your street's appeal

This is the second of the Dispatches from the Frontlines.

Tactical urbanism is all about making streets better places to be for people – both moving through and for whom the street is the destination. Local businesses and good public realm are the two chambers of a street’s beating heart: the reasons for people to be there. 

?Former long-time retailer, now placemaker and invigorator of business communities, Cyndi Christensen calls out her “top 5s” from long experience...

The appeal of Main Streets or High Streets to attract customers as well as other businesses is more relevant now than ever due to the impacts of COVID 19 on our economies. Business owners had to rethink how they operate to retain a profitable level of trade and for many this needed to include e-commerce. Focus now needs to be on creating a balance between staying safe and activation of our streets to continue to attract people and new business. 

BOOSTER 1: An active business association

While the passerby won’t see much of the association itself, they’ll definitely see its results. A local business association can and should engage a collective of businesses and community, be advocates, and lobby local government. These business associations can help to market the street, encourage and lobby for mixed-use in buildings (crucial for a vibrant place), and build an identity for the street. Mainstreet Australia’s Home Town Team Movement is good on this.  

Some business owners get it naturally, like this Lower Hutt florist, others don't – and a healthy business association can help lift everyone up. Pic: Cyndi Christensen

BOOSTER 2: Outdoor seating at hospitality venues

It's the closest thing there is to a silver bullet for regenerating a street. People in outdoor seating adds life, colour, and activity which creates vibrancy. As a rule of thumb, people are inherently attracted to places other people are – in fact Public Square Journal reckons sidewalk cafés are "silver bullets" for a street having high "walk appeal", because they effectively accessorise the street with people. 

Seating may need local authority approval, and local authorities should do whatever they can to get seating out there done well. Done well and consistently it is a way to market the location of your business, as well as making the whole streetscape more appealing (which attracts more people, and so on). 

But beware: done poorly it can detract from your business. Poorly means: having chairs stacked up outside, not putting tables and chairs out at all when it's poor weather, a solitary table and chair right outside your front entrance, not accessorising the space.  (Poorly done also means making the footpath inaccessible to people passing by, especially folk with impairments, so watch out for that.)

Not a cafe, but outdoor seating – this parklet is "furnishing" the street with seating and people. Pic: SM Corridor News

BOOSTER 3: A shipshape building frontage

It’s the basics: keep it tidy, clean, well lit windows, well maintained, clean accurate business signage. 

In general if you are not paying attention, the message your shop/building front tells passersby you do not care – so why should they? Or they will not notice your business. If they do, it will be for negative reasons. See more: Why We Need To Rethink Vacant Retail Spaces 

The street needs to create an interest for people, a mix of uses, trees, street furniture and outdoor dining all work in tandem producing a memorable experience.

If any thought's gone into how this shopfront looks for prospective customers, it was before this tenant moved in. Pic: Cyndi Christensen

BOOSTER 3: good foot access to public spaces 

Good means well-connected access – a straightforward, pleasant walk, wheel or scoot on contiguous, well maintained paths. The longer people linger in an area where your business is located the more apt they are to purchase from those nearby businesses. Check out the Project for Public Spaces’ Downtowns & Districts 

BOOSTER 4: slow (and fewer) motor vehicles 

It’s a fact: lower speed limits make it easier for people walking to traverse around the streets and creates a more shared space for people and vehicles – meaning people feel much more legitimate as space users compared to the vehicles. Check out Living Streets London’s slow streets sourcebook.  

(Higher vehicle speeds are toxic for streets especially when there’s any other weakness in the street’s appeal. Think about the last place you were with vehicle speeds of 50km (or more) and inactive shop fronts; the combination makes a street immediately feel unwelcoming, and you don’t want to hang around).

Note: slow speeds need to come with lower traffic volumes. Lots of traffic, going at slow speeds, chokes the street with fumes, which also kills the vibe (not to mention our lung tissues.)

Slow traffic, but still much too much. Pic: Greater Auckland.

KILLER 1: multiple vacant spaces close by each other 

This reduces foot traffic and can increase safety issues – both real and perceived (which is just as bad for commerce).  [Editor's note: But is any tenant better than none? Find out in our next Dispatch...]

Properties in a Main Street or High Street are most likely to be owned by a diverse group of people who can be locals but can also be absentee landlords. This mix leads to a varied state of building stock and quality of tenants. Landlords need to take the long-term view that the value of their asset is intrinsically linked to the attractiveness of its location. 

“All landlords should be long term investors in communities, never just extractors of value” 

– Urban Pollinators (2011) in The 21st Century agora: a new and better vision for town centres. Read more at The Portas Review: An independent review into the future of our high streets [PDF]

KILLER 2: Inactive windows in a tenanted space 

The blank frontage – you can’t see through it and glimpse anything happening inside – is a real vibe-killer long term. Blank walls are the worst for both vibe and for enabling overlooking (the friendly “eyes on the street”). But even if the frontage has windows and doors, covering them up or not opening them (in the case of doors) is a killer too. 

Blank frontages lack windows which encourage overlooking or entrances which open onto the street. These streets are not welcoming and discourage pedestrian activity whilst re-inforcing the perception of motor vehicle dominance and higher traffic speeds.

The Portas Review again [PDF] 

This shop is open for business, but you'd struggle to tell from 50 paces. Pic: Cyndi Christensen

KILLER 3: council getting in the way of a high quality space

Sad to say, it’s often council ourselves who get in the way. We have inadequate policies, insufficient resources, poorly-designed bylaws for maintaining and retaining a high standard of buildings, footpaths and streets. We also often create barriers to revitalisation plans, because some other well-intentioned council rule or priority (like berm rules) is allowed to create perverse effects. Check out (Re)Building Downtown

KILLER 4: lack of events, public activities, story-telling 

Cities are shaped by good events. Big or small, good events become integrated into the fabric of the city, celebrate the diversity of the city, and provide opportunities for the creative community to be exposed to the public and vice-versa. Without these public-facing activities that activate and attract people to its public spaces, a city can lose its identity and attractiveness for businesses and residents. See Rethinking the Eventful City: introduction 

Andrews Avenue activation, Lower Hutt (South End Business Group x Hutt City Council). Pic: Cyndi Christensen

KILLER 5 – lack of street identity

Could the street be anywhere? Not having a strong authentic brand or identity leaves a communication gap for negative fillers, like the narrative in this (entirely speculative) news story in Hutt News. Read more in City Branding and the Urban Identity Crisis. 

KILLER 6 – lack of connectedness to the street

Even a very pretty and appealing street can fail if it’s an “island” in a city: if there is no way to get there, no obvious way to move around or no obvious destination. If a person does not feel comfortable and cannot see at length the place that is their destination – they will not go. Blocks that are too long and too wide, and include large areas of carpark or empty lot, are perceived as unwalkable and are inevitably impassable for people with impairments.

Islands in a sea of carparking, with narrow and interrupted footpaths... (every strip-mall and ribbon development town, including Mana).

Lack of good connection between nice locations can make a place feel like a bunch of unrelated parts and dissuade people from exploring and experiencing a place on foot.

You can judge the accessibility of a place by its connections to its surroundings, both visual and physical.

The Project for Public Spaces nails it, with What Makes a Successful Place? 

Take-home messages?

Did you notice there were more ways to kill a street’s vibe than to boost it?  That's not a coincidence.

• Building a street’s vibrancy takes a long time of consistent, comprehensive good practice, whereas killing it can happen quickly and any number of “small” things can start it on the downward spiral.
• Beware “big ticket” regeneration via big flashy projects: they’ll suck oxygen out of other areas, meaning they get depressed and the big flashy thing will be an island in a weaker place.   
• And finally, beware prioritising the experience of being in a car in your street, over the experience of being outside one. 

It is easy to assume the little things don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but they do. Retaining your street appeal is an everyday effort, by everyone for everybody in the community. 

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Questions? Comments? Profound disagreements? Bring 'em on! Comment below. 

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