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

My son lives in a town on the south coast. He lives in a top floor one bedroom flat which suits him and he's happy there. The flats are on top of an estate agents. It's perfect for him as it's near to public transport as he can't afford to run a car and there is no parking available. His rent has gone up over the last two years and if this happens again next year he will no longer be able to afford to live there. This will impact his whole life. Talking to the estate agents people are leaving the town now to live further out in the countryside in case there is a second severe Covid 19 outbreak. I suspect this is true in a number of areas and will impact the larger towns and cities. So many lovely buildings just left empty, where he lives, M&S, Beales and a number of other stores have all gone.

I'm currently volunteering on a university project for the introduction of integrated housing in run down high streets. Very interesting and forward thinking. Affordable? Ah well.....

Its exactly the same in my town Peardrop50 the lack of investment is so obvious . Most shops are long gone and the Town Centre is like a ghost town.

My nearest town now is Holyhead. When we first came to live here in 1980 the high street had a small department store, a large Woolworths, Boots, banks galore, lots of clothes shops, shoe shops, craft shops, art shops, in fact there was nothing you couldn't buy in Holyhead.
Today only Boots remains among the charity shops, betting shops, a couple of banks, pubs and a few estate agents. The odd independent shop opens for a while taking advantage of available grants but none last long. The upper floors are mainly storage or shabby flats. This is a town with a busy port but continues to deteriorate.
Out of the town we have Tesco, Morrisons, Lidl, Asda, a huge new Aldi and the usual Argos, Peacocks, New Look,Wilkos, B&M, etc. The high street doesn't stand a chance.
Something has to change.

I lived near to a lovely vibrant French town, Villereal in Lot et Garonne, for a few years. The parking was free, the little shops thrived, the restaurants were always busy and lots of people of all ages lived above the shops in the square or the side streets leading to the main square. Parking was never a problem as people came and went. Even on market day. The evenings were quiet with French youths sitting happily chatting over coffee or a beer outside the bistros or bars. tabac. Totally different relationship with alcohol to ours.

I agree janipans the cost of parking in UK is prohibitive. I am always surprised on my visits there how much it costs for a limited time. Parking here in rural France is free in the main so I suppose I'm spoiled.

I think the demise of towns is due not only to online shopping but also to the fact that car parking is a nightmare! (That's why out of town retail parks managed to become o popular - free parking!)
Pay as you go is just a licence to print money. It limits time (and money) spent in town. (You don't have coffee and then carry on shopping with that friend you happened to bump into and you rush off back to the car park even if you would have really liked to try on that little sparkly number in John Lewis's!) and officious traffic wardens will joyfully slap a ticket on anything they can given the slightest opportunity. My daughter (a trained first aider) got a ticket once for stopping to check on people in the cars at the scene of an accident she witnessed! She had pulled up onto the pavement slightly so as not to obstruct traffic then ran the few yards along the road to the crashed vehicles - they didn't need her so she ran back only to find a traffic warden issuing a ticket - and he would not stop writing it even though he could clearly see the cars that had had the bump! - (it was over-ruled when she appealed!)
I would love to know what would happen to town centres if they made all car parking free, or subject to a nominal daily charge? (I know that in an ideal world we should all give up our cars etc etc but realistically - it's just not going to happen! How would people living in rural areas - young or old get about on the limited bus services offers and no trains etc? Oh, of course - they'd have to shop online and pay for taxi's to town for entertainment/meals and such (still the same pollution issues as is still using a car!)

I live in a town in a pretty affluent area. The town gets quite a few visitors, but they stay just for a couple of hours or so, maybe look at the sights, maybe have a coffee, but that's it. There are lots of cafés and restaurants, but Starbucks has closed recently, and I don't think many of them are doing very well. Lots of our shops have closed too - famous names. The independents which used to be such a feature of the town have nearly all gone too.
If the vacant buildings could be converted to housing, it may be that small shops serving those residents would become viable. I suppose the big commercial landlords would have to go broke first, otherwise rents are out of reach.

Living over the shop may be alright but remember shops can change use and there aren't as many planning controls on who takes the shop as people think there are. The Council usually have little control over who comes in. If Debenhams goes in our town that is it, we have already lost BHS and M&S, what might have taken another decade has taken place overnight because of COVID.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Covid not vivid

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.