People’s attitudes towards leisure time and the prospects for urban development were some of the hottest topics under debate at last month’s West London Inward Investment Agency and Whitbread leisure conference. Adam Tinworth reports
As staff hurried to bring in more seats to the packed conference room at the Kensington Hilton Hotel, it was clear that the organisers of the West London Inward Investment Agency and Whitbread leisure conference had hit on a winning topic for their seminar.
However, the discussion that ensued – while riveting to the audience – must have been a bit of a disappointment to West London Inward because there was less of a focus on west London. Although the first half of the seminar’s title – “Land and Leisure, the Prospect for West London into the Millennium” – was amply addressed, its application to west London was token at best.
The first speaker, Justin Worsley, associate director of the Henley Centre, was scheduled to discuss demographics and research – a topic one would expect to be familiar to the audience.
Changing definition
But, to the audience’s surprise, Worsley announced that the days of the demographic age and class analysis were numbered: “People are beginning to define leisure by the social occasion rather than by demographics.”
The reasons for this are varied, he explained. Age profiles are changing; life expectancies are increasing; the family structure has altered radically; and the labour market has become more flexible. Many of the common frames of reference have been eroded.
In short, Worsley was proposing that people could no longer be relied upon to act their age. He pointed to statistics on motorbike accidents as evidence. Accidents among young riders have dropped, while those among the older generation, the born-again bikers, have shot up. “It’s all ‘menopausal men’ on Harleys,” he said.
In fact, statistics show that the young are tending towards middle age, aspiring to marriage, having two kids and saving for a pension.
“The Baby Boomers – the party generation – are in their 30s and 40s. The younger generation are fed up with their elders and are more responsible,” said Worsley. “They have seen sex lead to HIV; drugs to drug addiction; and rock’n’roll to Phil Collins.”
The lack of predictability on earning progression is one reason behind this trend toward a more conservative outlook – as is the increasing affluence of the younger sector of the population. “The amount of disposable income that people have has grown and will continue to grow,” Worsley said. “But you can have a 60-year-old working as a janitor and earning £8,000 and a 25-year-old earning £250,000 in the City.”
The result? “The sort of good time you want is dictated by mood and social occasion,” he said. “Irrespective of age and class.”
Another fundamental shift had come in the way people thought about “going out”. They were less likely to want to dress up, according to Worsley. “In the UK, we’ve become addicted to work and, unlike Europe, we’re working increasing hours,” he said. “It’s because we laid off too many people in the recession and workloads grew to compensate.”
As a result, people spend more time just taking it easy and less time actually “doing something” with their leisure time. The clever leisure operators were already adapting to this by providing more casual venues, claimed Worsley.
On the issue of the current leisure boom’s durability, Worsley predicts that there will be a downturn over the next year or two, followed by a pick-up in the market.
He also pointed out some fundamental differences between attitudes to this boom and to the last. “The boom of the 1980s saw spending on eating out grow more than on savings,” said Worsley. “In the 1990s boom it’s the other way round.”
Another speaker was Hugh Siegle of Whitbread Property. He said that tougher times were on the horizon: “There is a danger of the A3 market overheating.”
And, as ever, the thorny issue of rising rents came up. “We have said that we won’t chase sites for the sake of getting them. They must produce the returns. Some companies will struggle in a year or so,” said Siegle.
Still, he remained evangelical about the industry: “Half of all new jobs created are in the leisure industry.”
Alistair Parker of Healey & Baker presented an overview of the maturing Urban Education Centre market in the US and its emerging counterpart in the UK (see Urban Entertainment Centres, p88). Parker discussed town-centre regeneration, mixed-use schemes, and security and safety.
A speech from a planning authority at a conference packed full of developers and operators is always going to be a tension-filled affair.
The impact of John Lett’s presentation was somewhat lessened by the admission that his own employer, the London Planning Advisory Committee, was due to be replaced by the new Greater London Authority. Still, his explanation of current planning policies and his thoughts on future planning issues was followed intently by the audience, provoking some aggressive questioning.
Lett’s message was not one that would surprise the audience – the need for sustainable development and reducing the use of cars. However, he suggested: “Local authorities in west London should resist the loss of industrial land to residential and leisure development.”
Market overheating
The news was not much better for those developing sites in the city centre. “There’s a feeling that the evening economy is motoring too strongly,” said Lett. “And there are a lot of complaints from the general public.”
But there were some sparks of hope in Lett’s message, particularly when he talked of future changes to the planning guidance notes. He suggested that the A3 class should be subdivided to allow planners more control of the type of leisure uses allowed in that class of building. The D2 leisure class came under particular attack.
“It has some arcane definitions,” Lett said, “which give it a whiff of Brylcreem and white socks.”
The existing D2 categories bear out that impression: cinemas, concert halls, bingo halls, casinos, dance halls and indoor/outdoor recreation or sport.
Suggested additions included multiplexes, bowling, and formats such as Urban Education Centres, megaplexes and integrated leisure and retail developments.
However, the trend for UECs to be city-centre, street-scape developments in the US, as highlighted by Parker, was welcomed by Lett. “If multiplexes really move back to the town centre, we will see planning and the market working in harmony,” he said.
Now that was something the audience did want to hear.
