Memorandum by Boots the Chemists (UWP
59)
THE PROPOSED URBAN WHITE PAPER
This submission is in response to the Committee's
inquiry into what provision should be contained in the proposed
Urban White Paper.
SUMMARY
This submission:
— supports the concept of an Urban
White Paper
— identifies the potential for this
paper to:
— and highlights a concern that town
centre improvement zones and urban priority areas will be unsustainable
unless underlying social issues are resolved as part of an improvement
scheme.
SUPPORT FOR
AN URBAN
WHITE PAPER
Regeneration of the built environment will only
succeed if it creates an environment that will both attract investment
and a desire from people to live and work there. Regeneration
will not be sustainable if it is forced through regulation, constraint
and control against the natural behaviours and needs of people.
The Urban White Paper, like its sister, the
Rural White Paper, has the potential to encourage new thinking
to the process by which government policies and the renaissance
agenda are adopted and implemented.
The paper could also promote a new agenda in
urban estate management by forming policies to manage change within
the built environment proactively.
Urban Estate Management as a process would identify
the drivers that attract investment. It would evaluate that which
is necessary to maintain, improve, develop and manage the built
environment in a sustainable way. The process properly designed
would assess the extent to which individual policies can combine
to add value to the process or conspire to destroy value.
A vision for the paper would be to provide a
can do creative diverse approach to urban renaissance with background
rules only to release energies into action. The approach would
not be a time consuming, long haul obstacle course.
THE POTENTIAL
TO INFLUENCE
THE PROCESS
OF IMPLEMENTATION
Within the context of regional economic development,
the urban environment will have to reflect the fact that affluence
will increase people's ability to choose their own lifestyles
and the demand for increased personal mobility and choice.
Government policy guidance can be too general
to meet the needs of local people. It has to be adapted to meet
those local needs and local circumstances.
The implementation of individual policies can
conspire and create conflicts or barriers preventing the successful
delivery of other policies.
For example, a strategy to penalise and restrict
car use is likely to encourage the mobile, affluent shopper to
shop out of town where there are fewer penalties and less restriction.
The conflict is the adverse impact on the commercial viability
of the town centre.
An urban paper designed as a working document
giving guidance on how to set governing objectives within a strategic
framework would provide an umbrella under which individual policies
can be brought together to work as one.
Underpinning the strategy would be a need to
create a competitive environment that will increase demand, attract
new investment, deliver sustainable development and create civic
pride and a sense of belonging and an identity. The strategy should
recognise that people strive and aspire to achieve more for themselves
and their families.
An alternative to the example above would be
to agree a governing objective to improve the commercial performance
of a shopping centre by ensuring that integrated transport policies
were reviewed and adapted to meet local conditions and managed
within a wider plan to improve accessibility to and viability
of a town centre while combating air pollution and congestion.
Given that the Urban White Paper has the ability
to set a new strategic agenda, encouraging local authorities to
take ownership of the need to manage in a comprehensive way the
urban estate, rather than allowing it to develop piecemeal through
a series of development rather than management strategies. This
submission argues the case that planning for retail provision
within the concept of urban renaissance has to be more strategic.
The argument starts from the concept that the
retail hierarchy is not confined to town centres but extends beyond
and embraces supermarkets, retail parks, etc, which have become
primary retail centres in their own right.
This approach does not argue for a change to
the fundamental principles promoted by PPG6 in favour of town
centres and against greenfield development.
It does, however, argue from the concept that
it is wrong to exclude off-centre retail activity from the shopping
hierarchy.
In the urban context shoppers have a wide choice
of locations to shop from. Some locations, like town centres,
offer a wide choice of retail shops. Others, like free-standing
supermarkets, trade from monopoly locations with open planning
consent. They are shopped by the majority of the population and
offer goods equivalent to the range found in any high street.
These locations clearly operate as primary retail centres and
are part of the retail hierarchy.
From an urban planning perspective the totality
of the retail provision has to be viewed in an holistic way.
A strategic review should follow a process that
will identify the need for new and emerging centres of retail
activity to be enhanced, the need to protect viable centres and
equally the need to recognise those traditional centres that now
face decline and a new form of regeneration.
The extent of a strategic review will depend
on the characteristics of an urban area. Within many large conurbations
the smaller towns, comprising one or more multiple retailers,
are finding it difficult to survive. Some are in decline. The
ring-fence provided by PPG6 is unlikely to attract new forms of
retail investment. There may be no alternative but to plan for
change recognising that a reduced retail provision will form a
different function and the surplus retail space will be used for
other purposes.
In this scenario a review of customer shopping
habits would identify customer preferences for primary shopping
locations. Such locations would be reviewed to consider the potential
to develop as an alternative to a centre where the primary retail
function has declined and where the centre is unable to compete
with existing off-centre retailing.
The strategic agenda would evaluate:
— the opportunity for other retailers
to trade (like supermarkets) with unrestricted use, in these new
primary centres;
— the extent to which new retail development
would break the locational monopoly and increase retail competition;
— the size of the potential development
to ensure it does not damage adjoining vibrant town centres;
— the potential to exploit integrated
transport policies and increase public transport services through
better access; and
— the development opportunities for
declining centres.
This type of approach will not be suitable for
all locations. Evidence from the Policy Action Team work has identified
a different approach to meet the needs to areas with multiple
deprivation. However, the opportunity to capitalise on better
access offered by these new primary centres might enable public
transport to extend into the less affluent areas and provide transport
linkages to give greater access to all.
To ensure that retailing prospers in urban areas,
we would ask the Committee to recommend that:
— local planning authorities should
undertake a strategic review of retail activity in their area;
— the review should acknowledge the
reality of new retailing hierarchies; and
— the review should propose tailored
local strategies that encourage competition and growth where it
is appropriate whilst managing the change in declining retail
areas.
THE NEED
TO DEAL
WITH UNDERLYING
SOCIAL ISSUES
Within the urban environment the underlying
social issues that have led to social exclusion will not be resolved
by the better design of buildings and the surrounding environment
as promoted by the Urban Task Force report.
Fundamental to any improvement zone—town
centre or urban—is the need to ensure that policies dealing
with social issues, homelessness, drug abuse, alcohol and social
services including education and health are integrated as part
of any programme of improvement.
A town centre improvement scheme that provides
good housekeeping and a better environment for shoppers will not
be sustainable if it does not deal with social deprivation and
shifts it to a location outside of the zone to be improved. There
are many examples in American cities where town centre improvement
zones have been successful in creating a better environment, reducing
local crime and attracting occupiers into empty property. Much
of their success has been attributed to the removal of the socially
disadvantaged from the streets, whereas the reality is that they
have merely moved them into another precinct.
Again the importance of identifying the appropriate
governing objective is crucial to the delivery of a strategy that
delivers the totality of improvements through policies that will
work together as one to add rather than destroy the value of any
initiative.
David Stathers, CBE
Head of Policy Development
January 2000
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