The news is another chain of shops went bust and an internet retailer bought the brands but not the lossmaking premises. Eh, not much news really. What is news is that there’s much agonising in the media over this and the future of ‘The High Street’. It seems the commentariat have had their heads in a bag for a while. Oh, and the UK government’s making a mess of its home insulation programme. It’ll take 10 years to do its limited plans at the current rate.
There are a number of connected issues here. In no particular order (but if looking for priorities note that one says ‘going to destroy our world’):
1. Post-war redesign of cities to move life out and make them entirely dependent on shops and offices left them economically brittle (and soulless).
- The world has moved on. Thanks to the internet (of a quarter century ago) shops and offices aren’t needed so much, removing cities’ attraction and economic raison d’etre.
- People not commuting to the office means the death of cities’ peripheral service industries.
Covid accelerated – not caused – these changes.
2. Global warming is going to destroy our world unless we do something about greenhouse gas emissions.
- We need many technical and lifestyle changes to fix this. The biggest single one in the UK is to insulate our buildings, though we’ll have to change how they’re heated and powered too. We’ll also have to turn down our average travel.
- There’s a shortage of skills to do any of this building, insulation and alteration.
- There’s a shortage of low and medium skilled work in the economy.
- By the by there’s a shortage of places to live.
3. The economy’s collapsed, and the government’s looking for ways to spend money that’ll do something beneficial. ‘Looking for’ might be an overstatement, but ‘should be’ at least.
Am I being overly simplistic here? This seems so blindingly obvious it hurts.
Cities have too many shops and offices, but not enough people. People have not enough homes. The homes (and the shops and offices) need modification. There’s a shortage of skills for this modification. There’s a surplus of labour.
Well start with building standards and training. Huge training, there’s going to be a lot of baristas and shop attendants who could be lagging attics. Stop the Mickey Mouse insulation sideshow and start a BIG building rejuvenation project. Convert much of the commercial property to residential, then people will be in town anyway bringing spending (and walking not driving there).
This will be a large job; crossing many ministerial, central and local government, and education and industry boundaries. It needs to be led by a senior figure, say… the Minister for Climate Change.