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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— October – November 2013
on the back of those small shops and busi-
nesses; probably robbing Peter to pay Paul,
but in the round getting by.
Irish streets have evolved into their cur-
rent form over generations. Buildings made
in response to the life that was lived in towns,
with the trades on which the family depended
close at hand are in limbo. Across the country,
hundreds if not thousands of vacant premises
languish in palpable sadness as doors remain
un-opened and steps un-swept. Given the
glut of retail space, often in recent utopian
schemes, and changing retail patterns, new
approaches are needed to reinvigorate our
streets and our historic towns.
There has been quite a bit of fuss about
what to do about the vanishing “High Street”
in the UK over the last couple of years. The
campaign champion, and Queen of the
Shops, Mary Portas has been involved in
a pilot scheme called the Portas Pilots. In
, at the invitation of the UK govern-
ment she published an independent review
into the future of high streets. She sees a new
breed of savvy shopper. “New expectations
have been created in terms of value, serv-
ice, entertainment and experience against
which the average high street has in many
cases simply failed to deliver. These reasons
alone conspire to create a new shopper mind-
set which cannot and should not be reversed”,
she pontificates voguishly. But she is right.
E
VERY day after school, I would
watch shopkeepers go about their
business from our bicycle-shop step,
leaning against the door frame with
my legs crossed. A hundred years of shoes
stepping into the shop had worn the stone
to a smooth polish and the darkness of the
eighteenth-century Market House oppo-
site gave a quiet pause to the busy street. In
front, parked on the public road there was
always a tangle of bicycles, carefully bal-
anced either side of
two bikes paired sad-
dle to handlebars. At
five to six every
evening religiously,
my father wheeled
the bikes into the
shop. It was a ritual
that was repeated up
and down the street
embracing all the
variegation of retail
life from haberdash-
ery to books, and that
again started in the morning with a street-
side ripple of quick sweeps. There were no
fortunes made, but people raised families
Ruminations on the
bicycle-shop step
Retail as the main
mode of business
for town centres is
outdated and will not
work to rejuvenate
them.
By Shirley Clerkin
Liffey
Valley,
charmless
and about
to get
much
bigger
Buildings
emotionally
affect those
who use
them
“
CULTURE
IN THE STICKS
Shirley Clerkin
Sensibly she advocates town-centre-first
planning policy, making it easier to convert
empty offices to residential use. By nurtur-
ing social capital in our towns, a
situation will develop that will
enable the economic capital to
follow. Her review found that
retail as the main mode of busi-
ness for town centres is outdated
and will not work to rejuvenate
them. Key to her recommenda-
tions is that town centres are
managed as a business and that
their management must create
a match for more sophisticated
alternatives.
Her report stirred a pot
for some pilot funding for
twelve towns, and a debate. In
September, the former Iceland
CEO, Bill Grimsey, published
his own report entitled ‘An
Alternative View’, but actually not
wildly differing from the Portas
report. Grimsey is of the view that
“Town centre/high street plans must encom-
pass a complete community hub solution,
incorporating: health, housing, education,
arts, entertainment, business/office space,
manufacturing and leisure, whilst develop-
ing day time, evening time and night time
cultures where shops are just a part of the
total plan”.
Another new report titled ‘Beyond the
High Street’ by The Centre for Cities also
makes a sensible recommendation. “Rather
than focus on retail in isolation, policymak-
ers need to start focusing on the role of the
city centre economy as a whole”.
That seems relevant for Irish
town centres too. By creating
out-of-town enterprise parks
and development we have in
effect “hollowed out” our mar-
ket towns of workers during the
week. By adding new cultural
facilities such as theatres on the
fringes, we have moved evening
cultural activities away from the
historic core too. And the same
thinking has vacuumed out the
long-standing function of towns
as places to live. It’s the familiar
doughnut principle. The rational-
isation of public services has left
many historic buildings vacant,
and in a downward spiral of der-
eliction. There are empty Market
Houses, courthouses, banks, post
offices and police stations all over
the country.
If you look at these losses as a whole, it
is clear that public uses are unlikely to be
found to replace them, even if the Portas
suggestions for “meanwhile use” and “com-
munity use” are implemented. “Meanwhile
use” is the temporary use of vacant buildings
or land for socially beneficial purpose until
such time as they can be brought back into
commercial use again.
The architect Patrick Shaffrey recently
again suggested in an Irish Times article
that we rejuvenate towns as places to live in.
He and the likes of An Taisce, of which he
was once chair, have been promoting such
policies for close to fifty years. Many of the
two- and three- storey buildings and former
public buildings could be reconverted for
homes very successfully, bringing people
back into the heart of towns and creating
a community with a real stake in its town’s
future. We need a policy shift which incentiv-
ises living in town, including perhaps zoning
that is scaled down to the micro-level of indi-
vidual floors in buildings, perhaps modelled
on the French inflexible retail uses (a butch-
er’s stays a butcher’s for generations) and
penalising out-of-town activities through
stringent parking charges, and utility
charges that reflect the disproportionate
economic, social and environmental costs
of servicing them.
In Ireland, the Heritage Council has long
been an advocate for heritage-led regenera-
tion of our towns. In its submission to the
Draft Retail Planning Guidelines in ,
the Heritage Council noted the lack of a
national organisation to support the effective
and sustainable management of our historic
towns. It recommended that consideration
should be given to the establishment of an
Irish Branch of the International Downtown
Association or the Association of Town
Centre Management, with an emphasis on
enhancing the vitality, vibrancy and viability
of our historic city, town and village centres.
Its submission also championed the role of
traditional retail units and independent
retailers and recommended that the retail
guidelines needed to protect historic cen-
tres where the units have evolved over time
as they are now facing fierce competition
from purpose built centres and units.
At the start of the year I vowed to be a non-
consumer as far as practical and to use it up,
wear it out, make it do, or do without. It is a
useful mantra and it has saved me from many
desirable but non- necessary purchases. So, I
have recently not been contributing much to
the profits of my local small shops, and shops
have sadly been closing, though presumably
not just down to my own heightened frugality.
But I do enjoy town spaces and want to expe-
rience streets with vibrant uses, not as sad
empty shells. My favourite shop is my local
coffee establishment, admittedly in a town
shopping centre but it has street soul, with a
spot-on mix of banter and beans, all counter-
pointed by the chic modernity of good Italian
coffee. In a mall. But in town. On a good day it
reminds me of standing on our old shop step,
watching the world and its mother go by.
Pic
caption
here
We need
a French
inexible
retail
model - a
butcher’s
stays a
butcher’s
for
generations
“
