High Street Tweak
Delivering local community engagement and capacity building on the High Street through long term involvement and short term interventions
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the high street’s decline across the UK. The latest statistics around the high street make for alarming reading. The constant cycle of lockdowns between 2020 - 2022 was a main factor in crippling footfall, which reached an all-time low in May 2020, when the British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported a 77.8% year-on-year decline.
That’s had an immediate effect on occupancy levels. The shop vacancy rate stood at 13.7% in Q4 2020, according to the BRC – 1.6 percentage points higher than the same point in 2019. In essence, the mass closure of non-essential retailers has pushed vast numbers of consumers towards online shopping, and left the nation’s high streets emptier than ever.
But all is not lost, and high streets are about more than shopping. Crucially, experts believe the high streets can still have a viable future if they adapt to the needs of their local communities.
During the first half of 2021 we delivered ‘High Street Tweak’ on behalf of Edinburgh Futures Institute / Edinburgh Living Lab and Data Driven Innovation initiative. Involving digital engagement, placemaking and rapid prototyping on two Edinburgh region high streets, to test ideas addressing local business and built environment challenges.
The project adopted an open project process, aiming to share findings about both the piloted potential solutions to high street challenges, as well as the project process combining data and design with a broader audience through blogs, film, webinars and research. It was one of 4 demonstrator projects exploring how a collaborative data-and-design approach can address key contemporary challenges and deliver positive impact. It follows on from the Edinburgh Futures Institute Smart Places series of events in 2020.
Over the course of 6 months (Jan - July 2021), the project combined citizen engagement and co-design with rapid prototyping, urban data and research. The aim was to better understand key high street challenges and opportunities, and pilot two small-scale ‘tweaks’ with potential to support the high street as a successful, vibrant and liveable place as the country emerged from Covid-19.
The project addressed four key questions;
How can we identify the most pressing short and long-term challenges for the high street as a place and for its businesses?
How can we quickly test possible solutions, adaptations or tweaks to create opportunities out of these challenges, or at least mitigate them in some way?
How can we share our learnings so that these short term pilots can have longer term legacy?
Can small-scale changes to the built environment create meaningful improvement for the high street?
A Toolkit of 6 ideas for these ‘High Street Tweaks’ was developed through conversations, surveys and digital co-design workshops with businesses, residents and organisations from two high street project locations - Gorgie-Dalry in Edinburgh and Dalkeith in Midlothian. Two key ideas were selected to be rapidly prototyped, piloted and evaluated on-site.
In Dalkeith, ongoing pilot legacy involves a Tactical Urbanism Toolkit, hosted and operated by a local organisational partner (One Dalkeith) as a lending library of open-source CNC-milled outdoor furniture to support town centre social, economic and cultural activity.
In Gorgie-Dalry, in collaboration with a local arts organisation (Gorgie Collective) we are liaising with the local authority to permanently install public benches in strategic high street locations, informed via project insights, to support public life and accessibility.
The project was unique in combining research and practice, with design outcomes genuinely responsive to data-driven insights and stakeholder engagement.
The partnership and collaboration between a project team composed of a Lead Architect (New Practice) and University of Edinburgh’s Futures Institute was critical. Research and data-driven insights were primarily led by the University of Edinburgh - including blogs, films and research papers reflecting on and openly documenting the project process, Public Life Studies to input spatial insights into project decision-making and support pilot impact assessment, and in developing a ‘Collaborative Evaluation’ approach to understanding project and pilot successes.
New Practice led engagement and piloting, working closely with diverse stakeholders through digital co-design workshops, youth activities and a co-design process to refine and build pilots.
High Streets
The project provides evidence of significant transferable experience to the context of similar challenges faced by high streets and town centres across the country.
Across the UK, high streets have been hit with months of closures of non-essential stores as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, while the long-term decline had been ongoing for years, due to the rise of online retail and often poor planning decisions permitting development to turn it’s back to the high street.
Most recently, our experience from High Street Tweak has been utilised in collaboration with Maccreanor Lavington on character studies and local plans for high streets, town centres and neighbourhoods across Ealing (Thriving Northolt, 2021-22), Newham (Newham Character Study, 2021-22) and Watford (Designing Watford Town Centre for the Future, 2021-22).
If you would like to learn more about our work to deliver long term involvement and short term interventions, please contact info@new-practice.co.uk
Client: Edinburgh Futures Institute / Edinburgh Living Lab and Data Driven Innovation initiative
Location: Edinburgh & Midlothian, Scotland
Completion: 2021
Funding: Scottish Funding Council
Awards: Nominated, Best Partnership, Landscape Institute Awards 2021