If you care about your local community, you can’t help but feel disheartened at the sight of a closing store. Vacant shops on a once-busy high street are, in a word, depressing. So too are the words, practically screaming at you in block capitals, ‘EVERYTHING MUST GO’.
But these are increasingly familiar sights. With the collapse of House of Fraser, Toys ‘R’ Us and Maplin among others, the phrase ‘retail apocalypse’ has gained ever-greater potency. Last week, two reports painted an even grimmer picture. PwC found 1,123 stores had disappeared from Britain’s top 500 high streets in the first half of the year. And the Local Data Company recorded the number of new shops, restaurant and leisure openings fell to 19,803 over the same period—leaving 4,402 more gaps on the high street.
These factors have played their role in the transformation of the high street. But we have failed to consider what might be the most important point of all: that, for years, the high street has not been performing its function.
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