Each high street will spend the money in a different way and to varying levels of success. We’ll be seeing the sprucing up of shop fronts, re-deign of streets, Super- BIDs being set up, meanwhile uses, or any other of the many ideas and more that have been explored in the Portas Review. Every intervention will have a very different impact at a very different cost. Whilst a public realm improvement project, focusing on de-cluttering and resurfacing a street, will cost at least £1 million, the same amount of money might be used to provide a one year rent free period for up to 100 shops. What investment will have what impact? No doubt this would be a subject of intense debate, but hopefully we’ll now be able to find out from these experiments. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s an exciting time if you’re interested in high streets.

The idea behind the management of Marylebone High Street that Richard alluded to is that if you leave the make-up of a high street to market forces, you’ll eventually get a homogenous spread of national multiples who can afford higher rents serving the population with the highest disposable income and displacing some of the places main attractions. Instead, if you take a view on the value individual shops have on the overall image and feel of the street, the unquantifiable value of their presence might be more than the difference in rent they can pay.

It’s good to know that large landowners like Lend Lease are becoming aware of the need to manage the overall experience of a place. However, Coppell’s use of Westfield and One New Change as other examples of this suggested to me that although they are moving in the right direction, they still lack a fundamental understanding of what makes a place that people like using.

Recently I asked people on twitter what shops they would have on their ‘perfect high street’ and the suggestions were, as expected, a range of different small scale, local independent retailers. But the reason for this wasn’t necessarily because local shops are better for the local economy, or because they contribute to increasing social capital in a neighbourhood, but because of the type of place that they create.

We don’t want to spend time in places that have been minutely designed to ensure that we are always safe and comfortable, inhabited only with people like us, buying the things that we buy.

We want places that will stimulate us and keep us interested. Places that take us outside our comfort zones and show us things we wouldn’t see otherwise. Places that haven’t been specifically designed for us, but emerged over time. Places that are authentic and whose character isn’t artificially preserved. With shops that have been there for years, with the same staff. With restaurants that have secret menus that only the locals know. With dark bars in basements that you only notice after multiple visits visit. Places that can’t be consumed in a single serving, where the more you go the more you find out.

I’m sure ‘retail experts’ will be quick off the mark to tell us that we can’t create places like these. They will tell you that small local independent retailers can’t pay as high rents as national multiples, so they can’t be accommodated in new retail areas, or expected to survive as rents increase in existing areas.

But this is what Simon Baynham, from the Howard de Walden Estate, realised back in 90’s. There is an unquantifiable value of having some types of shops on a street because of their impact on peoples experience of the street as a whole, and this is worth more in the long term than the difference in rent they can pay.

These principles can also be applied to new areas. Granted they will never have the historical continuity of victorian high streets, but there is still a lot we can do to ensure they are places we want to go to.

Unfortunately I’m not getting paid to advise Lend Lease on how to put together a great retail area, but if I were I would suggest four things:

1: Dedicate a number of shops to local business that have been in the area for a long time and pepper pot them throughout the new development. A local corner shop, a hardware store, a fishmonger.

2: Invite some occupiers that focus on other activities, not retail. Maybe some artists studios, or an exhibition space, even a place of worship or a small cinema.

3. Invite some culturally relevant occupiers. Emerging designers and start-ups, that need small units to try out their new business ideas.

4: Don’t be too precious about the look of the area. Let it evolve over time. The character of the area will emerge from the people and activities that use the place.

The bigger challenge however will be to apply these principles to areas where there are multiple land owners. Who will be the landlord that will accommodate the occupier that pays lower rent, and would other landlords contribute to the difference if they were convinced of the wider impact a particular shop could have? This is the challenge for most high streets.

Chatsworth Road Neighbourhood Plan from Peter Dickinson on Vimeo.

I’ve been working with the Chatsworth Road Traders and Residents Association to create a Neighbourhood Plan for Chatsworth Road and its surrounding area.  The focus of this plan is on the neighbourhood centre and how well it serves its surrounding residential and business community.

I’m hoping to establish a method for creating neighbourhood plans that can be replicated in other neighbourhoods at low cost, while establishing a clear vision of how the community envisage their area to change in the future.  These plans will allow communities to take a proactive role in the shaping of their neighbourhoods rather than simply reacting to unwanted development.

We will be launching the Chatsworth Road Neighbourhood plan this coming Wednesday (19 Jan). In advance of this we have created a discussion thread on yeahhackney.com to get people involved.