by Anthony Walker and Peter Morgan
Architect Anthony Walker and surveyor Peter Morgan jointly touch on the philosophies behind current retail thinking, particularly the continuing out-of-town and city-centre debate.
The out-of-town v town-centre debate
by Tony Walker
Very little has been written about the philosophy or social context of shopping-centre design, and yet this form of architecture, with its inherent tension between the permanent and the impermanent, has more impact on everyday life — affecting town centres and green belts, motorways and central streets — than any other form of architecture. It houses one of the fundamental activities of the community, that of trading goods and services.
Of what concern is architectural and design philosophy to the world of development yields, turnover rents and service charges? This decade has taught us that the consumer has become far more critical of what is provided, his aspirations for his own lifestyle have dramatically increased. He wants to enjoy shopping, whether it is a fast, efficient trip for necessities or leisurely fun shopping for non-essential goods. Trying to understand why people want to be in one place rather than another, and what the design qualities are that initially attract and then retain the shoppers’ interest, is critical.
Shopping-centre design is a synthesis of fact and fantasy, a designer sandwich with a layer of basic concept as foundation, with a variety of fillings to titillate the palate of the consumer, topped with buildability and ease of management. In a team where the number of clients, consultants and individual tenants seems to escalate daily, how does design flair survive?
Design is more than skin deep. It is a combination of the permanent and the transient, with a hierarchy of durability for different elements. For the shopper, the shop names, the impact of the lights, banners or street performers may be the most significant aspect of its design. But for the good centre there will be an underlying idea that outlives the fashionability of these elements and is more fundamental to its success; the layout of the centre, properly positioned entrances, a structure which can adapt to the changing needs of the tenants and an ability to evolve, with the flexibility to take on the latest design image.
Towns have their own essential character which continues regardless of changes in their buildings. It is this continuity and permanence that often appeals to us: an ability to develop to meet new demands without destroying the links with the past. So should shopping centres be able to change? For, as a generation, we should have a pride in our culture and not wish it so easily disposable that no mark is left when it ceases to exist. In this context the right concept can provide a framework in which design flair, recognising current modes and fashions, can be liberated.
With the importance of image also comes the need to make a shopping centre identifiable as a place in which to shop. The form of the retail warehouse is far removed from the sensitive conversion of a listed pub into a speciality shopping mall, and yet the architecture of both needs to announce its retail content. At the same time, the purchaser at the out-of-town centre wants to be reassured that his decision to go there for ease of parking, convenience of trolley access and good value for money has been justified — and the building which is often free-standing in a sea of cars needs an architecture which reinforces these beliefs.
Within the town the problems are different. There is an urban fabric which not only dictates land values and thus often availability of land for development but also establishes the character and the nature of the town and its role as focus for the community. The shopping centre will often be on backland, never seen as a single building, breaking through into the existing streets at only a few selected points.
If we are to retain town centres as viable places to shop we have to look carefully at their virtues. Do we need to segregate the types of shopping? What do we enjoy about towns? Tourists flock to see them because of their historic associations, people make a leisure activity out of visiting buildings that they admire. Many of our towns provide this immediate appeal free of charge, so long as our new developments do not destroy it! This does not mean providing a pastiche of the past, but rather looking at the urban forms and echoing their street patterns and textures in the buildings we create. The Lanes at Carlisle echoes natural and established pedestrian routes, as does a series of three shopping centres at Lancaster.
We should consider management of the town centre in the same way that we have management of the shopping centre. On refurbishing a shopping centre we may redistribute the shop units and break up the supermarket into a group of speciality shops. Similarly in the town centre we should not seek to create large self-contained, self-sufficient centres which turn their backs on the rest of the town, but rather consider a series of smaller developments at appropriate locations along the High Street to revitalise the whole — each development viable in its own right but also reinforced by the others within the area. Does this mean that major space users cannot be accommodated?
Achieving sales efficiency through large floor areas may be too simplistic an approach for town centres. Computerisation of sales and restocking combined with an efficient means of distribution may allow a series of more specialised stores to be accommodated within the town centres.
The greatest constraint, however, will continue to be access for goods and for consumers. If we are to preserve our town centres we need to find ways to get people in and out. This needs careful sensitivity-analysis by architects, designers and planners to bring traffic routes into the town. Again a series of smaller schemes with parking distributed around the central area will help to even out the traffic flows on streets, making use of the existing infra-structure. Careful traffic engineering analysis may avoid the need for new bypasses disrupting the urban fabric.
Refurbishment is fundamentally different from new development. It is not just an understanding of what is required but also of how it is to be achieved. The liveliest designs may be impossible to execute because of leasing patterns, structural constraints, the logistics of introducing sprinklers and other practical problems.
Strategic policies recognising the differences between cosmetic and more radical refurbishment need to be established at the outset. The three Ds of refurbishment — defend, develop or demolish — recognise broad categories which will help the team to focus its attention on what can be realistically achieved.
Disruption must always be kept to a minimum, but if the work is carefully planned, the centre will survive quite substantial alterations and the good designer will be looking actively at ways in which the contractor’s temporary works can be made into features such as Christmas grottos or other events which help to heighten the public’s awareness and appreciation of the changes which are taking place.
Design has a fundamental role to play in providing something that we will enjoy not only as part of the shopping retail development industry but also as citizens responsible for the future of our community.
Understanding what people want both in the short and long term, and providing designs which reflect their context, but also include the dynamism and tension to provide excitement and stimulation for a successful shopping trip, are matters for concern both for the retail developer and his consultants.
A continual and searching debate is required between developers, local authorities, retailers, architects and planners properly to understand and resolve the issues of fitting shopping into the community, enhancing rather than damaging our towns and countryside. After all, our man-made environment is probably the most valuable and vital part of our inheritance and is held in trust for the future.
Megacentres v town centres
by Peter Morgan
A few days before I began writing this article the decision from the Secretary of State was published refusing consent for retail development at Cribbs Causeway, Bristol. Not many months previously, the application for more than 1m sq ft of shopping at Thurrock was granted by the Secretary of State. The results of other appeals are awaited and still more have yet to be heard. All of these appeals concern the “third wave” of out-of-town retail development which was started by John Hall’s Metro Centre, with which I had the privilege to be closely associated.
There are four groups of people involved in the struggle to establish out-of-town shopping centres in Great Britain. These are developers who foresee the chance of good profits; investors who may wish to invest large sums of money in this type of development; planning authorities, including the Secretary of State, who usually do not want these developments to be built, and retailers who say they do not want them to be built yet compete with each other to take space in them when they are; and, finally, that often-forgotten group, shoppers.
The attitude of developers and investors is fairly easy to understand. If profits are apparent, developers will be anxious to take them; and whether or not investing institutions are prepared to put as much as £250m to purchase one of these monster developments will depend on their view of their future. Not many institutions have sufficient money to play this particular game, but those that can may do very well. Many people doubted the wisdom of Standard Life’s decision to invest in Brent Cross, but there can have been few better property investments purchased in the last two decades. Brent Cross continues to perform spectacularly well.
Already rents in the Metro Centre, certainly in the better malls, look distinctly historic when compared with the rents now being achieved at Meadowhall, near Sheffield. One imagines that the Church Commissioners, who would obtain the majority of the benefit of rental growth, will be very satisfied in due course.
The attitude of the planning authorities, or the majority of them, was only to have been expected. They have dug trenches for themselves and fought, successively, out-of-town food stores, out-of-town retail warehousing and now out-of-town megacentres. They have lost the first two battles comprehensively and thereby lost an advantage that they might have gained for local people.
They look set fair to lose their final battle, and to lose any benefits which might have accrued to them had they taken the trouble to seek out the best possible site for such a development and to obtain benefit by way of planning gain or even selling the developer a site which they owned.
Local authorities, instead of trying to turn back the tide of progress like Canute, would do better to spend their time by first identifying the right site and, second, in improving town centres which, with a few honourable exceptions are, by comparison with modern shopping facilities, urban slums.
The principal improvements which need to be made in town centres include the avoidance of traffic congestion, the provision of more and better car parking, the provision or enhancement of toilet facilities, more creches, the allowance of excellent catering facilities in prime locations in the High Street, pedestrianisation where this has not happened, environmental improvements, protection from the elements, finding space for more and better shopping and last, but by no means least, the future maintenance and promotion of the town centre as a whole.
Impact
Public planning inquiries spend many days, indeed weeks, arguing about the likely increase in trade over the next five or 10 years. Experts who look back at the official figures for the increase in retail sales volume see a total increase of some 30% since 1980.
Simultaneously, one looks at the proportion of money spent by the public in retail establishments and one sees that this has declined from some 55% of their income in 1955 to a fraction over 40% in 1985. It is at least conceivable, therefore, that retailing could recapture some of this lost proportion of spending and that there is thus a larger cake out there waiting to be shared among the available retail outlets.
In many traditional town centres the congestion, particularly on the busier days, is such that many shoppers are deterred either from visiting the centre at all, or from spending longer in it than necessity dictates.
If facilities were more pleasant and if there were no congestion then it is my belief that shoppers would look at their shopping trip once more as a leisure experience. This would perhaps induce them to come more often, stay longer and spend more.
This hypothesis is supported by experience in the North East, where, despite the huge amount of trade being taken by the Metro Centre (and this is growing month by month), central Newcastle is also experiencing an increase in trade above the national average. Not only is the Metro Centre itself a wonderful experience for the people of the North East, but also the slight relief of some of the pressure on Newcastle town centre has made that a more pleasant place to visit.
Another interesting factor to emerge from the North East following the opening of the Metro Centre is that the city fathers in Newcastle because (and one believes only because) of the Metro Centre have at long last been induced into spending some money, time and effort in improving Newcastle city centre. In other words, competition has had its usual beneficial effect.
This sits strangely with the inspector’s remarks with regard to the Cribbs Causeway appeal at Bristol where he claimed that a reduction in the likely increase in trade in Bristol city centre would mean that there would be insufficient incentive for urban renewal and improvement to take place. It is my contention that it is only the pressure of competition which provides a realistic incentive for local authorities to do anything at all about the state of the shopping centres which they, and they alone, control.
It was, to take another example, interesting that the London Borough of Bromley took some initiative to improve Orpington town centre only shortly after a planning application was made for a megacentre at Hewitts’ Farm, 3 miles away. Officers and members of the borough claim the timing was a coincidence — but one does wonder!
I, therefore, am keen to see a limited number of megacentres granted consent in the UK — positioned so that the vast majority of the population is able to reach at least one of them in less than an hour’s driving time. Some might claim that this places an undue emphasis on the motor car, but it has certainly been the experience at the Metro Centre, also at Brent Cross, that public transport to these centres is well used. Long-distance public transport in the form of coach trips is also an important source of customers for the Metro Centre.
Town-centre competitions
In the meantime, the pace of urban renewal quickens and there have been more announcements of major town-centre extensions in the past three years than one can remember over the last 20 years.
Many people, however, are beginning to question the form of competition being organised by local authorities for their town centres, and some major developers have vowed they will take part in no more.
The average cost for a shortlisted competitor for a town-centre scheme is in the region of £250,000. For the medium-sized development company, two or three of these will make quite a dent in the year’s profits. This is particularly galling if one of the competitors puts in what appears to be an unjustifiably high bid which is rarely binding, since the local authority is not often in a position to actually deliver the land on which the shopping centre can be built, so that there may be two or three years for the selected developer to renegotiate the terms upon which he made his original offer. Large sums of money are involved, frequently in excess of £100m. Perhaps those involved in the organisation of these competitions should think about the best way of organising them.