Thinking outside the box - a better use for our High Streets, housing, cafes, bars

They’ve always had flats above shops haven’t they? I lived above a launderette some 40 odd years ago. Very warm and noisy.

I think these suggestions are good. One town I know that had an empty shop in a shopping mall set it up with table tennis, that seemed to go down quite well.

What about having cooking workshops sponsored by supermarkets donating and promoting produce and if they were to take off, maybe other workshops where sought after skills could be honed.

Bartering shops, take a leaf out of the way trade is done in the Middle East, where retailers could offload stock that they were having trouble shifting and members of the public could haggle the price down. I wonder how much stock from any area of retail is never sold?

Going back to the OP, I agree, I think there has to be other ways to revitalise the high street and any strategy would need to be tailored to suit local communities.

Yes I agree sounds like an excellent idea Peardrop needs to be adapted to the needs of different areas but something needs to happen. Space for small independent shops would be good as well.

Any town planners on GN, I wonder?

Basically, it seems a good idea.
Certainly all these empty shops will have to be used for something. Turning them into accommodation seems the obvious choice. Much better than destroying more of the countryside for new houses.

Actually our town has done this with several buildings already. Think it’s a great idea

Well gillybob, I live in the North West and worked for the civil service for the last part of my working life I really get fed up with people thinking public sector workers get guaranteed income and pensions. I can say that people at the top grades do get great pensions but not the ordinary Joe Bloggs working under them. My pension is a pittance, it would pay for a special meal out for hubbie and me and thats it. I also paid monthly into my pension, you dont get it for nothing As for guaranteed income, I didnt have any increase in pay for 6 years whilst private sector workers got 1 or 2% . Please don't lump us in the same boat as MP's , trust me, its very different.

My nearest town centre has already been converting upper floors of retail units into living accommodation. Even some pubs upper floors are now flats.
One building, that for many years was a building society and has stood empty since the building society was taken over by a bank. It has now been converted into accommodation, including a central hub for homeless people of the town.
They are then either given somewhere to sleep in that building , or found a more permanent place in one of the several hostels or bedsits and flats around the town.
The main problem is with an empty Marks and Spencers, Beales and possibly Debenhams, big retail shops are now empty, hopefully sleeping to be in use at some point in the future.
It is quite surprising that one of the big stores that has refused to have an online presence beyond a website just for information is still going great guns on the High Street - a case of if you want it, you have to go and get it !

some good ideas here,something has to be done.In my town,the old BHS is still empty,and now we have a Beales too,that is a huge building.I don't however agree with the idea that we all have cars.I haven't,and a lot of others have to use buses too.It's easier for us to go into town than to out of town shopping.I think we need shops in a town centre,but incorporate other ideas too,large empty buildings are so depressing.

There's certainly everything wrong with lots of places. I read about a comparatively new high-rise office building going begging because all of its workers have decided to work from home.
Will it now lie empty for the forseeable or will some bright spark come up with the idea that it'll house many people ? By the time they've decided what to do with it it'll be ready for demolition after having been vandalised/ squatters and just generally left to the mercy of criminals.

Places need lifting from their run-down status by both councils and private landlords. There's no need, as well as it being unfair to tenants , to have to live in places that look like bomb-sites. MP's need to get off their backsides to see what needs doing in their given constituencies and give these owners a shake.

People are still paying rents and council tax but getting nothing in return. Town halls need sorting out, badly.
If all housing was presentable it would give tenants more of an incentive to keep them that way, hasn't that dawned on them yet ? Give people pride and it will reap benefits for the areas and local businesses.

The upstairs of high street shops in my town is already largely flats Peardrop.

When I was a girl, most were flats too. My father had a shop and we were fortunate that we didn't live "above the shop" but lots of our family friends did just that.

I feel the real issue in my area is how to deal with the empty shops, not so much the accommodation above them.

I have to disagree with you Peardrop. Most of us do not prefer shopping online. None of my wide circle of friends do it from choice, and we would all rather have a day out browsing the shops than sitting trawling through shops on the computer.

No thank you, mixing older and the young living accommodation. Its bad enough with detached housing, music played for all to hear, mobile phone calls taken with speech so loud I know who is going to break up, time of a party and of course who HAS to go visit her folks, all this in a couple of hours! I travel ip and down the UK and I can't help but notice the places that seem to have thriving High Streets are those with no shopping malls and say two hour free parking. My own home town had a mall and shops began to close. Then out of town retail park, whole town area closed almost. Yes, free parking. Very limited public transport to the Retail Park. Not everyone is able to drive especially when older and taxis can be expensive. Yes, encourage housing in the High Street but encourage more retail to stay or invest too. Retail parks - I can easily lose track of where I am as they are all the same.

We have flats let above the empty shops in our town so it hadn't worked here. The shops that are open are charity shops and nail rooms. Once Tesco came to the outskirts, the town was done. We have a Thurs morning market & it's down to 5 stalls! The council have wasted money pedestrianising it and there are no pedestrians!! I honestly don't know how it can change while these large supermarkets and malls monopolize everything.

In my nearest small town in the early part of The century terraced houses were turned into shops. They now need to turn them back into homes.

Aepgirl I do believe I said many not most shop on line and I think those numbers will increase as the current middle aged become older, also vivid fear will change the way people shop.
Personally a day on a high street full of individual and interesting shops, galleries, and places of interest would be a lovely place to spend a day browsing. Especially if you only had to get the lift or take the stairs to enjoy.
Noreen3 I take your point that not everyone has a car so maybe centre of town living would be even better but with good transport links out to suburbs and countryside.
Lovely to get other people’s ideas, between us we could design a superb, fit for purpose town centre and change our way of life for the better.

Covid not vivid

Some of you have come up with valid points against the idea, so how about some ideas as to what to do with town centres so that they don’t become no go areas.

It sounds a good idea. But there are practical issues to overcome. Residential property is worth less than shops, so landlords are reluctant to change until all hope is lost. Mortgage lenders often discriminate against flats above business premises. And buildings with multiple occupiers are always vulnerable to problems, which are liable to be worse with a mixture of different types of occupier. Maybe not insuperable, but some quite big issues.

I'm afraid the city centre of Nottingham is being overtaken by student accommodation.

The Esther Report in, I think, 1960 or thereabouts, proposed exactly this sort of approach. Time to dust it down and update it.

Wealthier areas still have lovely town centres with tea shops, antique shops, individual clothing shops, etc. Deprived areas are full of charity shops, betting shops and boarded up shops.
I suppose it's the latter that I was thinking of. Envisioning McCarthy and Stone type apartments with juliet balconies and hanging baskets. Pedestrianised streets with some sort of covered transport like tuk tuks going up and down to link with main transport.
Lots of investment required.
Maybe just stick to licensed eateries and take the pubs and bars out of the equation.
Lots of good comments about mixing drunken youths with elderly early to bed types. That's for another thread about changing this awful culture of a good night out measured by the amount of alcohol regurgitated on to our streets.

Blinko there are proposals, due to come into force in September allowing a wider range of commercial buildings changing to residential use without planning permission. This will include changes like shops becoming cafes, without planning permission. It will not apply to community facilities like libraries, pubs etc.

It can be done , I read this article a while back as France
also suffers the high street problem in places (my little town
for one)
www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/may/20/from-bleak-to-bustling-how-one-french-town-beat-the-high-street-blues-mulhouse

The conversion of unused upper floors of shops was tried in the 1980s. It was not a great success. Have you tried living above a cafe, a bar or a restaurant? For the young it might be adventurous but for the over 50s, 60s etc it would be a nightmare after the novelty wore off.
However as short term living accommodation it would be fine