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Not until strangers become locals: physical and digitally savvy markers of high streets

October 2019

Abstract

As our physical and abstract worlds have increasingly become entangled, their relationship in our high streets has become more unsettled. “Networks are all edges… we thought there were windows but actually they’re mirrors” (Aranda, Wood, & Vidokle, 2015). In the unfolding drama around high street sustainability we have persisted with the wrong business model; shaped by retail and clouded by the digital. High streets need room to compete, to reshape to local market forces and localized profits. Because one thing is certain. Retailers will always return. Especially to strong community-driven demand. This study will look at three complementary visually driven ideas: spatial diversity, urban markers, and spatial culture; in the context of previously documented case studies and The Preston Model. The keys we need to the top, middle, and bottom padlocks on the door to the future of our high streets are use and scale, business footprint, and visual sense.

Keywords — “urban”; “streets”; “digital”; “heuristics.

Introduction

This is the last in a trilogy of papers, each of which are self-contained and can be read independently of the others. The terms high streets and main streets can be regarded as the same thing and are used interchangeably. The first paper looked at ideas around territorialisation (high streets as visual markers of our social) and the second paper focused on deterritorialization: the process of alienation and a heuristic dance that can transcend that alienation. In this third and final paper we will look at how by being physically and digitally savvy we can reterritorialize the local, but not until strangers become locals.

Reterritorialization is a phase change from a state of deterritorialization, of a collapse in meaning, and can be described as “transformations which may yield another identity” (De Landa, 2006, p. 123). In this study that new identity is the localisation of meaning. Where a high street that has been alienated is reterritorialized by the localisation of its urban objects; its boundaries the shimmer of recognition skirting the horizon. And while everything beyond the shimmer remains filled with strangers, the urban assemblages that make up the high street are restored in new emergent conditions of meaning.

We exist with meaning through the analogy of ‘visual creasing’. It speaks to an archaic reincarnation of the high street, around which we orient our lives. A high street can thus be thought of as a visual crease in the otherwise inconspicuous landscape of the digital where there are no visual creases, and “the ability to orient oneself in a meaningful way starts to melt” (Aranda et al., 2015, p. 8).

Several case studies are referenced to support the key ideas of spatial diversity, urban, markers, and spatial culture. The concept of localising profits is a game changer and, along with a strategy of adopting appropriate business models for the high street, will go some way in redressing the current perception of lack of diversity and imbalance between digital and physical commercial activity. An over-reliance on unsustainable use is complicated by the fact that retail especially is slowly killing off the proverbial ‘goose that lays the golden egg’: the human cooperation and collective intentionality (Searle, 2011, 2016) that can be argued underpins a high street.

The barrier high street customers face relates to the physical size of retail, as well as its ‘financial footprint’. A psychologically aggressive online presence deters from the reality of the ‘bricks and mortar’ of a high street: a reality in which they are not mutually exclusive. However, in its current form, retail is an oxymoron in our high streets because it competes with itself to the detriment of the high street it serves.

This problem of ambiguity in the associations around the concept of sustainability and high streets is part of a larger problem of interpretation. Just as with terms such as mixed use, vitality, viability, which are used to describe sustainable urban environments, we come across many terms such as resilience, ecological, social, economic, environmental, diversity, etc to differentiate various types of sustainability. What these variations point to whether we realise this or not, are efforts to describe our behavioural condition, rather than any specific statement of output per se.

Sustainability it is argued is a product of, and can be found in, behaviour. And behaviour it can be argued resides in the environment, and our visual relationship with it. We use our environment because we can see it, as a tool or option. We are hard-wired with a goal-oriented heuristic and navigate around moving from condition A to condition B, as we aim at what we want and reach for the affordance in the objects that surround us (Peterson, Gibson et al.). Our digital world is not excluded from our environment; in fact “fast and frugal heuristics [aligns most closely with] adaptive decision making and on simple classification rules in machine learning” (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999, p. 26). Ultimately the environment is one of collaboration, in which “we see fast and frugal heuristics as enabling us to make reasonable decisions and behave adaptively in our environment—Homo sapiens would be lost without them” (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999, p. 29).

Our primary motivation, at the most basic modern-day level of survival, is economic. But the primary drivers for economic success can be found at the opposite end of this spectrum. In visual sustainability through visual meaning. And our visual world only works for us if there is enough visual meaning; if the world which we look at is visually sustainable. The final piece of the argument is therefore that visual sustainability is the true definition of sustainability. It resides in our efforts for survival, as well as in conditions of self-actualisation.

Spatial diversity

The “battle of the high street is one between scales: physical, social and time scales” (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 176). This is part of the urban discourse (Salingaros & Coward, 2005; Salingaros & Mehaffy, 2006), but can also be argued to be perceived, not just in gradations of detail, but also in terms of layering of information. That meaning is slowly released in a palimpsest of meaning. It can also be interpreted in terms of space syntax’s foreground/background mapping of busy and quieter streets; at thresholds where persona’s change (Goffman, 1971, 1982); or of the idea of overlapping networks.

That “diversity is not the same as ‘mixed use’” (Vaughan, 2015, p. 173) is an important concept for our urban. Mixed use may instead be thought of as a contributing factor to diversity; and that diversity is all about “spatial structure” (Vaughan, 2015, p. 173). Spatial structure in turn can be though about in terms of scale. Vaughan notes how “diversity is rarely measured with any great accuracy or detail and measures of diversity that take account of a spatial dimension are rarer still.

After all, diversity has innumerable spatial variations” (Vaughan, 2015, pp. 153–154). Spatial variations are the shapes, we can argue, that are just like human faces. We instantly recognise someone’s face from billions of other faces. Which are as diverse again from the countless faces spanning time. So how then is it possible to measure diversity? That the most successful form of measuring visual diversity is that we know it when we see it. Individuals can be “transformed from inhabitant, to commuter and to citizen” (Vaughan, 2015, pp. 154, 161).

This idea can be extended to include how we exist in our diversity as users. Similar to how we role-play in the manner described by Erving Goffman (Goffman, 1971) and alluded to through the idea of “social glue” (Jones, Roberts, & Morris, 2007, pp. 50–51). For example, a status is assumed or attached to persons, dependant on where they are physically located in the urban. This is true of role-playing in any high street. A visitor soon becomes familiar observer, then onlooker, then participant. On entering a shop, they enter a domain of higher status and more value. They are customers, served upon. When they leave their status changes back to observer. The servers on leaving on their lunch break themselves become a class of more importance or value, as potential or real customers. Sometimes the server assumes a dominant position, for example in exclusive high-end luxury good sales, but more often it is the customer who more fully understands their dominant position.

We are then local or stranger depending on our physical location along our high street. Local to street but stranger to shop; or local to shop but stranger to street. In these tensions it can be argued the street comes to life precisely because of these tensions. We can point to a certain threshold between physical location as well as abstract location (digitally) in role-playing, for example, when a resident becomes a stranger and vice-versa. Perhaps then spatial integrity acts as an independent variable, while choice is one dependent variable, and resident and stranger two more dependent variables off that. The importance of all these considerations for this study, is in trying to understand more about levels of alienation and how it affects meaning around us. It also seeks to uncover new strategies in fighting the deterioration of meaning in our high streets.

Complex interactions like these make it impossible to fully understand the richness of human interaction and human interaction with objects. Role-playing characteristics are vital to the concept of visual sustainability because these add to the rich tapestry of life. Life may be said to consist of layers or waves of meaning. Each wave crashing on the shore of consciousness, followed by another, endlessly diverse, never the same. This analogy of waves then appears to capture the true essence of visual diversity. That the structure of a high street produces a richness of meaning and interaction.

This study takes the approach that for diversity, we need not quantify anything in the traditional sense at all. All we need to do is understand the capacity of measurement. We measure things by analysing our visual world. We measure with visual meaning. That visual world needs to be sustained and enriched; and the measurement we use in a tacit sense is visual sustainability. The meaning of the individual parts is different enough for everyone; that measuring them in a purely quantitative way becomes meaningless.

Shifting diversity patterns alludes to another recurring theme in this study, the idea that a high street can expand or contract over time, and that, far from being a problem, we should expect it to. Because meaning and value is more important.

It shouldn't be enough for a street lined with buildings to say, ‘I'm a street that means something to you because I have objects called buildings.’ But that the conditions of satisfaction include that the street actually has meaning and value. Where we make something the case: ‘I’m a street that is relevant to you, with memory and meaning’; or ‘I’m a street by which you are sustained and enriched in daily life through the visual relationship you hold dear’” (De Kock, 2019).

Spatial diversity is an enabler of visual adaptability and responsiveness. Vaughan directs our attention to what may be considered the most physically obvious form of diversity in our built environment, that of “experiential diversity [which] is formed by differentiating building shapes, land parcels [which affect building shapes] and movement patterns, and consequently shaping the pattern of human encounters” (Vaughan, 2015, p. 157). In all these variables we can argue around the question of what comes first. Do the street networks come before use, or does use determine where the streets go? Do buildings shape human encounters, or do human patterns and encounters shape the built environment? Traditionally in a bottom-up process one would expect the latter, but in our modern age, a top-down process inevitably drives the former. In the case study of Surbiton, for example, it appears however that the “small junction of streets” (Vaughan, 2015, pp. 157–158) attracted the shops and not the other way around.

This process of seeding alluded to by Hillier (Vaughan, 2015, p. 172), speaks to thresholds in our urban between adaptability in the granularity of our urban with conditions of “irreversible change”. Where for example smaller buildings on small plots are more likely to be preyed upon by developers seeking economies of scale through land consolidation and big box or large footprint developments (Vaughan, 2015, p. 172).

Seeding also speaks to the spatial significance of overlapping super grids with local grids (Read, 2005) as well as virtual or digital grids. The seeding of both land use and co-presence (Vaughan, 2015, p. 173) can be argued adds to the richness of meaning. “It is easy to overlook this self-evident aspect of land use diversity; the greater the diversity of land uses, the more likely it is to generate different sorts of activity by different sorts of people” (Vaughan, 2015, p. 173). And if that meaning is sustainable, then so too are the visual constructs within it.

For economic sustainability, this study concurs with the proposition by Vaughan, that spatial diversity offers more and acts as a ‘wrapper’, reinforcing mixed-use, land use, and people use:

the fact that diversity has many dimensions that arguably work together to make for a rich ecology of the high street experience. Analysis of shifting diversity patterns over time is shown to correspond to the continuity and robustness of the street network (Vaughan, 2015, p. 156).

Vaughan points us to the strong link between diversity and space syntax; diversity as “a spatially related factor, rather than a random mixing of land uses (or people) within an area” (Vaughan, 2015, p. 156). We think again here of how this may be combined with the fast and frugal heuristics outlined by Gigerenzer and in how the business footprint determines the usefulness of a high street. By business footprint is meant the urban markers that identify levels of economic sustainability.

Urban markers

The usefulness of something to us visually, and not merely as a quantitative measurement, sets the conditions for urban markers in high streets. And just like meaning, usefulness is different for everyone. Usefulness sets the conditions for reterritorialization to occur. It provides the conditions for business activity. And how the business footprint is shaped in turn shapes the social. If the visual creases in life represent doorways to an unfolding future, then the doorways are the process of being sustained and enriched by the visual relationship we hold dear to our surroundings (De Kock, 2019). We know the visual relationship we hold dear when we see it. If we were able to instantly transport a person between different urban and natural environments it would become instantly clear which environments sustain and enrich, and which draw the life out of us.

It may be said that context is one of the most underrated forms of measurement. That our urban is not necessarily about space syntax theory but about common sense. Even less valued of course is tacit knowledge (Polanyi). The simple truth is that if we focus or invest too heavily in the parts of any assemblage then we will lose contact with whole. The whole serves to inject a measure of common sense; a ‘restore point’ to which we can return when we have completely lost our way.

Consideration is paid to these urban phenomenon as they have a bearing on the concept of visual sustainability through a structure of urban markers. Complexity theory and agent-based modelling (ABM) have revealed convincingly the importance of connectivity in networks. Perhaps more important than proximity, as already observed by Vaughan, is connectivity. The power of connectedness in the urban is a spatial aphrodisiac of sorts. This is revealed in power law behaviour where, just as the more connected become more influential, so too the rich become richer; and the phenomenon of preferential attachment takes hold in the urban (Feldman, 2019).

The phenomenon of preferential treatment is often a catalyst in the obfuscation between mixed use streets and the policies that shape our urban. While mixed use is “identified as a key component of sustainable urban communities… both academic and policy-oriented literature [focus efforts around] ‘vitality’ (pedestrian activity) and ‘viability’ (the ability to attract investment) ” (Ruiz-Apilanez, Arnaiz and De Urena, ‘Beyond Lively Streets’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 130). In the Toledo (Spain) case study it was found how a set of ‘monolithic’ uses, (for example tourism), when combined with inflexible stewardship, can produce false results. The importance of this finding is that visual sustainability is more than the sum of its parts. Visual sustainability is not coded language for historical replication and commodification. Strong pedestrian presence and property investment do not on their own signify a healthy urban environment (Ruiz-Apilanez, Arnaiz and De Urena, ‘Beyond Lively Streets’ In: Vaughan, 2015).

The example of the Toledo case study showed how local policy biased activity because the local business community considered their livelihood lay in tourism at the expense of a more permanent and authentic local mix of uses. The conclusion was that active ground floors do not in themselves mean anything if the rest of the buildings are empty or contain the wrong mix of uses, or if their use has been monopolised by one specific transaction (Ruiz-Apilanez, Arnaiz and De Urena, ‘Beyond Lively Streets’ In: Vaughan, 2015). The outcome described was of a town hollowed out by the daily emigration out into nearby towns, which offered both tourist and locals a more substantial mix of uses with which to interact (Ruiz-Apilanez, Arnaiz and De Urena, ‘Beyond Lively Streets’ In: Vaughan, 2015). The result is a pathological urban condition, and similar symptoms can be found in historic centres across Europe and the UK. Venice for example is a useful case study in support of this point.

The way to avoid making similar mistakes is to acknowledge the importance of urban markers (usefulness) for visual meaning. That meaning of objects in high streets produces emergent assemblages, which form part of larger assemblages by association; and aligned with similar meaning in adjacent assemblages. Over time a powerful urban condition or presence emerges that sustains economic activity.

It can be argued that while time is a linear process, our visual world is not. Meaning does endure over time, but it exists in a non-linear, interactive, uncertain, unpredictable, emergent, complex world. One that Gigerenzer delights in for its heuristic of decisiveness and agility. It can also be argued that heuristics as interpreted by Gigerenzer, is highly compatible with space syntax methodology which is oriented in three specific dimensions raised by Vaughan: space, movement, and land use (2015, p. 158). Gigerenzer adds a fourth dimension, that of decision making; which itself may be said to be closely aligned with factors such as choice and integration of overlapping networks that Vaughan elaborates on. It is also compatible with our “intentional proactive attempts to advance in the city through learning” (McFarlane, 2011, p. 33).

This is especially true if it “can be said that integration is a measure of exploratory movement” (Vaughan, 2015, p. 162), and of course should be borne in mind with the concept of thresholds discussed earlier: between the familiar and unfamiliar, resident and stranger, territories where status is elevated (shopper and counter staff) etc. These aspects of how we interact in space are important for the concept of urban markers in this study, as it sets out to understand how urban markers are important for heuristics (the fast and frugal approach adopted by Gigerenzer) which is important for reterritorialization of lost space.

A point worth repeating is that the shape of our built environment is the result of what can be argued to be the compounding effect of poor policy, zoning, and other top-down interventions. As Gigerenzer explains of his experience consulting with The Bank of England; if there is a fundamental misunderstanding at a strategic level, then disaster awaits all the downstream outcomes. This is true for the built environment at planning and traffic management levels. Architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture are all downstream or dependent activities and, it can be argued, are consequently constantly being hampered by poor higher-level strategic planning decisions.

Dwelling on physical attributes of urban centres Vaughan points us to what appears to be the strong correlation between subjective vibrancy scores, higher levels of mixed use, and larger town centres (which implies higher levels of centrality); concluding that “diversity of use goes hand-in-hand with economic success over time” (Vaughan, 2015, p. 160). We can thus equate this with an inside-out-inside phenomenon. An iterative process where meaning extends outward into the environment, which in turn affects the point of origin, as follows: visual orienting leads to visual meaning, which leads to visual sustainability; which results in diversity of use, which results in an economically sustainable business footprint, which results in visual orienting.

Vaughan also reaches the conclusion that “a variety of building types, sizes and street morphologies… are more likely to propagate patterns of co-presence over time” (Vaughan, 2015, p. 168). This study would hold that conditions such as high turnover or big box typologies are symptomatic of a deeper underlying fault-line, that points to the disintegration of durable meaning for the users of the urban. Because businesses will always follow the users of space and where space is most used. By contrast users of space do not necessarily follow businesses and when they do, for example, in ‘big box’ retail parks, there are invariably significant long-terms strategic errors made in implementation and interaction with users.

What are the reasons for containment of space in big-box retail, other than to not localise the physical, economical, and social production of space (Figure 1). Urban markers to be true, but unsustainable and avoidable. A high street is not a retail mall and a retail mall not a high street. But the uses that line a retail mall are the same uses that purportedly threaten the existence of our traditional open-air high streets. And so, we appear to be alienated or driven away from open air high streets into the arms of the fetish of globalisation. A certain level of indoctrination appears to be evident in the social, it can be argued, that has succeeded in redefining high streets as indispensable panoptical fortresses.

Conceptually, as witness to these acts of reterritorialization, we are left to wonder about the benefits that may be accrued by removing the roof and four walls; and redistributing the retail into the street network to form an equally effective centrality. The point is not about the economic viability of large-scale retail centres, but about with their alienating effects on our high streets. Because no roof is large enough to span the entire urban.

Derby, UK (Google Maps)

Derby, UK (Google Earth)

Figure 1. Retail: the wrong economic model? Modern fortresses of panoptical space.

Spatial culture

One hundred years ago our role as humans in our environment may have been suitably described in terms of how

… an organism needs to make inferences about its environment to adjust, survive, and reproduce (achievement); [that] the proximal cues available to it to make these inferences about its environment are uncertain (ambiguity); [and that] the organism processes ambiguous cues by substituting or combining them (vicarious functioning) (Brunswik cited in Gigerenzer, 2000, p. 46).

That spatial culture, as one example, is not about the environment or the organism, but about “the relationship between the organism and the environment (Gigerenzer, 2000, p. 47).

Much of psychology after the cognitive revolution is about what is in our heads: Which logic does human reasoning embody? How many primary emotions should we distinguish? It is little concerned with what cognition, emotion, and behavior are for and how they relate to the structure of environments, both physical and social (Gigerenzer, 2000, p. 53, emphasis added).

It is in the relationship with our environment as Gigerenzer points out that we can move away from being trapped by the parts, and which holds the greatest promise for understanding how we are sustained in life by the visual relationship we hold dear.

Spatial culture exists arguably more as an inside-out process (bottom-up); not outside-in (top-down). Polanyi is a strong proponent of the idea of extending meaning. The idea presented by analogy then is that the suburb is best conceptualised as being in the mind, “no longer an actual space but a virtual space” (Silverston 1997, 13, quoted in Laura Vaughan, Sam Griffiths and Muki Haklay. ‘The Suburb and the City’ In: Vaughan, 2015, pp. 17–18). This speaks to Polanyi’s idea of moving beyond the individual parts to the meaning out there, beyond ourselves.

Spatial culture in a high street may be described by what McFarlane refers to as “a joining of… spaces through gathering” (McFarlane, 2011, p. 36). This visual sense is attuned to how “societies order their physical space… [and] suggests that there is a cultural symbolism embedded in space” (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 175). Spatial culture is the glue that holds the components of visual sustainability together along with spatial diversity and urban markers. All three together describe the process of physical buildings shaping and being shaped by context.

Palaiologou looks specifically at “the way streets, buildings and building uses bring together unique street profiles; and more particularly, high streets… [that are] distinctive… because of… building morphology and function” (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, pp. 175–176). The notion is presented then of how fixed urban elements really do exist in time and space; of “whether a local place has a fixed boundary or whether it shifts over time, depending on how the street’s surroundings grow and change, or indeed, according to a person’s own experience of the place (‘The Boundaries of Belonging’ in Hall 2012)” (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 177).

This sense of layering of meaning can be reconciled with Hillier’s concept of the movement economy in that “urban places are the by-products of cumulative processes (multiplier effects) which act and become more complex over time” (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 182). The application of this complex layering effect on our visual world is similar. “Where an assemblage of meaning is slowly being enriched and changed over time. To the point that it becomes sustainable and fixed in our memory; and we use these assemblages to get around” (De Kock, 2019).

Spatial culture also shifts when the layering is too complicated (Figure 2), for example, in fractal-like density or dysfunctional grouping of objects, where “optimal levels of visual arousal” are exceeded (Street, Forsythe, Reilly, Taylor, & Helmy, 2016, p. 2). We can return to the idea of information theory in relation to alienation discussed previously by repeating the idea that there is a “sweet spot for complexity” (Ellard, 2015, p. 114), an optimum setting which mediates two extreme forms of alienation: too little and too much information. In both extremes research points to uncomfortably

high states of arousal [that]… generate stress… that designers of the built environment have reason to attend to factors that might contribute to boredom and that the influence of environmnetal complexity, as demonstrated decades ago in Berlyne’s pioneering experiments with rats and people, might actually affect the organization and function of our brains… in the cumulative effects of immersion, day after day, in the same… [predictable] surroundings (Ellard, 2015, pp. 115, 116).

Figure 2. Interest in visual surroundings tapers off, while preference falls away.(Berlyne, D. E. (1970). Novelty, complexity and hedonic value. Percept. Psychophys.8, 279–286. doi: 10.3758/bf03212593).

The interplay between two streets in the Islington case study is interesting for its exploration of the conditions or “distinct features that render” one street the high street, and not the other (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 187). This ambiguity between streets in Euclidean space can often be found in other urban centres, where initially the distinction between the importance of streets can be troubling, another example being Greenwich, London. But these ambiguities are quickly resolved “when one reaches a high street, [and] the local identity of the area is easily perceived” (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 188). The distinctive elements are a high street’s DNA and recognised as “the social resource and signature” (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 188); both of which are its visual meaning and represent visual sustainability.

In a physical sense then we have returned to the first of these three concepts outlined in the abstract, that of spatial diversity. That: “Building use diversity” as well as “the way diversity is articulated across the block fronts” defines the success of one street over the other (Palaiologou, High Street Transactions and Interactions’ In: Vaughan, 2015, p. 188). The results obtained from analysing two similar streets three-dimensionally are encouraging because three-dimensional analysis is the right way to analyse spatial culture, not top-down plan views. “The typical town is not a pattern of streets but a sequence of spaces created by buildings” (Cullen, 1995, p. 46).

What would be a game changer is developing a form of space syntax for three-dimensional environments. Where the morphology is the façade, proximity and length of features; and in conjunction perhaps with biometrics, foreground and background can be analysed for attention span. The Islington case study provides much food for thought through Palaiologou’s observation about how parts to whole can be processed through inductive thinking, and the idea of “a threshold between the local and the city scales”. That a threshold is achieved speaks to more than spatial culture but to economic culture as well.

Will the real high street please stand up

Various case studies have illustrated not only traditionally understood high street configurations, but also the emergence of what may be termed ‘pseudo high streets’ from within urban fortresses of economic and social activity (Figure 1). That they have been defined not only in physical terms but also by their tenants, through use. The shopping mall is one typology that seeks to reinvent our high streets. The online high street is another, lined by web sites and web pages representing storefronts and goods and services. Centralised around public squares such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram which feed virtual high streets such as Amazon or Netflix. Neither are valid. How then do we get the real high street to stand up?

One could argue that it is all about appropriate use, diversity of use and scale, a common thread in many documented case studies (Jones et al., 2007; Vaughan, 2015). Concentrations of activity in our urban are also contingent, it can be argued, on our intuitive understanding of the presence of scale found in nature that we so admire; of self-similar fractal-like assemblages. And fractal-like scale and self-similarity can be found not only in morphological components but also in economic and social (inter)activity. The fractal-like scale of an Amazon store or retail chain can be said to deterritorialize and so undermine the values of traditionally understood high streets.

The adaptability and scalability of the three visually driven key ideas presented in this paper: spatial diversity, urban markers, and spatial culture, are reliant on the way we think about what it is a high street is. On the outside-in and inside-out ways of thinking about urban connectivity.

This analogy is evident not only in our urban but can be carried over into the social. In how concentrations of activity from the central hallway of a house in the suburban for example, reaches out into the neighbourhood where the local street acts as a common hallway, shaping concentrations of activity that define us more broadly. These streets in turn form more intense concentrations of activity in the high street, where we gravitate to shop and socialise. The high streets in turn provide the connective tissue horizontally (through other nodes) and vertically (through hierarchical nodes) towards the metropolitan heart, which in turn, provides the meaning for inner city life. And the heart of these interactions arguably lies back to the start, in our hallways; or perhaps more symbolically, in the hallways of our minds.

So, it is not only a matter of simply seeing the urban and its effect outwards. But in how we can also learn from the reverse process; in how the countryside affects our cities. From the house hallway we are oriented towards that one high street that becomes the marker in our mind of centrality. The meaning of the urban marker will be different for each individual but the experience is similar, in that we are connected meaningfully to scalable concentrations or hubs of activity.

Another outside-in problem that produces false starts is in how so many viewpoints held about the urban are externally located, in a sort of aerial ping-pong of meaning. When the plan takes precedence. A bird’s eye view is entirely different to the view from eye-level which foreground a completely different set of challenges. It is true as Polanyi (1969) points out, that we only understand the wholeness of ancient ruins if seen from the air, whereas on the ground the connectivity in meaning is lost or displaced by the narrow and limited viewpoint. But his point was ontologically driven, not physically. Regardless of the difficulty and questionable significance of being able to see and so judge the urban from the air “urban environments that are strongly connected (hence very successful) usually look irregular from the air (Gehl 1987)” (Salingaros & Coward, 2005, p. 103). This makes complete sense. That good ‘bones’ or connectivity, is a result of navigating three-dimensionally along the ground through space, not above. The establishment of unique urban patterns or environments occurred by a series of spatial elaborations negotiated by eye at ground level. The fact that new meaning, or a sense of the entire construct, could only be viewed from the air was most often incidental to the ancient process of tacit knowledge in the production of space at ground level.

Inside-out thinking is the idea that there is more to space than binary opposites; of space as city or space as nature. Reverse thinking city and nature, Brenner and McFarlane et al. suggest ways towards redefining our relationship with our surroundings, by extending our idea of urbanization outward to include the affordances of natural resources. This idea can be extended further to include our virtual world and digital markets. That our high streets embrace the markers in our digital world. For example, not only in connectivity along the high street, but through digital exchanges with nearby production nodes such as farms, location-specific influences, and producers of luxury and niche market products.

It makes sense to align our high streets with the digital world of online retail. High streets must “adapt and grab a piece of the action with e-commerce,” Woods says. “Shoppers are building brand loyalties online, and that will translate into more brick-and-mortar store visits” (Sharon Woods of LandUseUSA Urban Strategies, quoted in Steuteville, 2019).

The Preston Model: how scale and business footprint make visual sense

And lessons learnt from America are paying dividends in the UK (Chakrabortty, 2018; Logan, 2018; Nowell, 2019b; Sheffield, 2017) as Preston succeeds in keeping profits within the communities that support the local high street. In adopting the “Cleveland model”(Community-wealth.org, 2014) Preston’s high street has been transformed (Gilmour, 2019; Lancashire Post, 2018) from “Britain’s unhealthiest high street” (Walker, 2015) languishing at “the bottom 20% of the deprivation index” (Leibowitz & McInroy, 2019). As it fights an over-dependence on big retail, the job market remains strong (Indeed, 2019) with new business opening (Sheffield, 2019; Titley, 2019).

This is being achieved in what has been rebranded “Community Wealth Building” (Preston City Council, 2019), and nationally dubbed “The Preston Model” (Howard, 2018; Manley, 2017), by recycling business opportunities through “anchor institutions [which] are those institutions in the local area that cannot relocate to another part of the country… which are all invested in their local area and promote community well-being” (Preston City Council, 2019).These anchor organisations

procure services from local firms where possible, keeping funds within the county’s economy … The most recent spend analysis found that the procurement from institutions rooted in Preston retained within the city was £112.3m - a rise of £74m from 2012/13. Within the wider Lancashire economy (including Preston), £488.7m of spend had been retained, £200m up from the baseline analysis. Since the project started, 4,000 extra employees in Preston are now receiving the Real Living Wage… Preston was also named ‘Most Improved City in the United Kingdom’ in ‘Good Growth for Cities 2018’ (Nowell, 2019b).

An astonishing turnaround by all accounts despite its critics (Nowell, 2019a) and political bias (Manley, 2018); and yet excruciatingly obvious as a solution. That it required political will as well as influence is self-evident and its success is now nationally recognised (Leibowitz & McInroy, 2019).

In fact the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) which helped form this initiative “is working with Gateshead, Sunderland, Darlington, Hartlepool, Wakefield, Leeds, Calderdale, Kirklees, Oldham, Wigan, Salford, Birmingham, Lewisham, Wirral and Southampton to adopt local wealth building initiatives involving a range of anchors” (Leibowitz & McInroy, 2019). CLES have a history in high street research (Centre for Local Economic Strategies, 2015) and strongly advocate for the “changing functionality of town centres, with different uses for the high street being central to this, as a place for living, socializing, and a hub for community based activities” (Centre for Local Economic Strategies, 2015).

The Preston Model illustrates the advantages of centralities, of durable local economies, where the local has become its own territory. Once in place, digital economies of scale can support this reterritorialization of high streets. While the process may be slow, threats and detractors many, the visual sense of scale and footprint will become increasingly evident through increased levels of human interaction in localized high streets.

(Photograph by Andrew Gritt/Wikipedia)

http://www.royalgazette.com/business/article/20181120/experts-view-on-economic-rejuvenation-model

(Centre for Local Economic Strategies & Preston City Council, 2019, pp. 6–7).

Figure 3. The Preston Model

Conclusion

This study holds that we are confusing two types of high streets. The first is physically based in; evolved; adaptable; and formed from the granularity of its surroundings. The second exists through and is sustained by rhizome-like globalized networks; both as physical and virtual entities: the physical, present but alienating; the virtual, an ontologically subjective stock exchange with no local meaning.

This confusion is easily maintained because “the Internet follows the same structural laws as the traditional city” (Salingaros & Coward, 2005, p. 165). We have assumed too much. A shopping mall is not a high street. The uses that sustain a shopping mall are often unsustainable in a high street. And we expect too much from, as well as over-emphasize, the threat of online shopping. We should instead return to what a high street is and does. It is a construct, a meta-assemblage created by people for people. It provides affordance through ecological perception as well as acts as a placeholder for the heuristically sustainable behaviour of bounded rationality.

The promise Big Data holds for understanding diversity and mixed use in our high streets (Jones et al., 2007, p. 112) is in many respects self-evident in the avalanche of information being produced. So much information in fact that it threatens to destroy our capacity to discern what is important. And even if we were able to access data, which is hidden behind corporate structures, paywalls, and governmental agencies, the way we navigate our physical world cannot be solved by this avalanche. Data does not offer the solution that “people could stop shouting at one another and settle matters peacefully by sitting down with pencil and paper and saying, "Let's calculate" (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999, p. 29).

Information exists as strange objects until the right strategy is put in place to capture its meaning. That strategy must take account of our heuristic nature; that we are heuristically programmed to take short-cuts to be able to make sense of our high streets. By understanding urban information, we can save struggling high streets, but not until strangers become locals.

Gigerenzer points to his adaptive toolbox for a number of heuristics that reterritorialize and may be useful in future research including the recognition heuristic “to make rapid inferences” (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999, p. 30). For example, high streets whose shops ‘feel’ local to that specific community are probably more trustworthy and less alienating. Because

Although the mechanisms of recognition memory may be intricate and complex, the recognition heuristic can be described as an algorithm just a few steps long. We do not need to know precisely how recognition memory works to describe a heuristic that relies on recognition… that simple heuristics can be used singly and in combination to account for a great variety of higher order mental processes that may at first glance seem to require more complex explanation (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999, pp. 30–31).

Another heuristic that deserves more credit in future research is the emotion heuristic; that “emotions can also function as heuristic principles for guiding and stopping information search” (Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999, p. 31). For example, not wanting to walk past certain shops or along a certain part of a high street provides the cues to quickly and accurately validate research assumptions that would otherwise, in a complicated scenario full of thousands of influencing factors, be almost impossible to prove. For future research then, the importance of the mind in selecting the right heuristics to navigate the urban is , it seems, one of the most under-utilised and under-estimated methods available to us in discovering why it is that some of our high streets are failing and some not.

As the digital becomes more influential, there is a certain perverse excitement about Ellard’s idea that we are “traveling beacons of personal data” (Ellard, 2015, p. 25). We are potentially each an internal affordance. We also see the affordances of the artifacts surrounding us through our actions, known as “perception in action theory… The idea that action sets up perception” (Michaels & Carello, 1981, pp. 48, 51). But often (as is evident from our modern-day built environment) the problem is that there is no call to action from our physical or digital objects. We are not forced to think about them, or to participate.

One example where we do not feel compelled into action, is in the production of Big Data - which claims to be an affordance to society. We are told that it is shaping the future of our high streets. But does it? And can we really grasp its meaning? Suggested therefore is the idea that under certain circumstances, until information is contextualized and localized, Big Data will have little to no real meaning for us. That it will instead tap into the autopoietic regions of our brain in the service of some stranger beyond the shimmer of the local, and out of reach of the bounded rationality that describe Gigerenzer’s heuristics.

The digital also speaks directly to actor network theory (ANT) in the context of an Internet of Things (IoT). Which suggests a future of biometric conditioning; the possibility that we can be ‘configured’ in relation to both physical space and virtual or digital space. The idea that enclosure, which represents the noblest of architectural devices, is represented by not only physical walls (as alluded to by Ellard) but also configured through forms of digital enclosure (or containment) should be taken seriously. We stand at the edge of vast new frontier of information harvesting. Future research will validate its usefulness or levels of threat in reterritorialization of the local.

The American urban has much to teach us as it faces its own “retail apocalypse” (The Washington Post, quoted in Steuteville, 2019). It is not just that high streets are “over retailed” (Steuteville, 2019) and in many cases being held hostage by the wrong type of financial model, but also because of a more subtle yet blindingly obvious reason. The circulation of money.

A last point is that even if retail abandons our high streets in its present form, it is only a temporary loss. Retail will return and when it does it will certainly shape itself to succeed in an environment which complements, not detracts from, the high streets, towns and communities it serves.

The single most important advantage high streets have over online shopping lies in the “information exchanged through personal contact and people movement [which] has a much richer content, including information derived from a combination of voice tone, expression, and body language (Hallowell, 1999; Hallowell, E. M. (1999), cited in Salingaros & Coward, 2005, p. 185). Strangers become locals when, as seen in The Preston Model, events and actions are localized and underpinned by sound reasoning sprung from fertile conditions that encourage “simple cognitive heuristics [to] exploit environmental structures” (Gigerenzer, 2000, p. 54).

And while internet shopping may not be the only stranger in town these days, any urban strategy around high streets that does not account for and harness the power of human contact is likely to add to the repetition of false starts. So, for all the media coverage about the death of our high streets, it is only because we are too heavily invested in its imposter. If we scratch the surface to the layer beneath, the old high street is still there. But it is slowly being suffocated by the duplication and instancing of unsustainable business models. Monopolies that drive up rent and alienate other more sustainable uses.

There is a sense of déjà vu in the process of filling a high street with junk to collapse its uses; and then reterritorializing it with an imposter. One that populates space with exactly the same uses that occupy massive isolated, generically driven, globalized retail malls, and online shopping catalogues. Leaving the high street to compete with a mirror-image of itself.

We must therefore resist and follow the brave custodians of our localized economies if we are to unlock the door to the future that looks backwards at the past. And the three keys to the three padlocks on that door are use and scale (spatial diversity), business footprint (urban markers), and visual sense (spatial culture).

___________________________

References

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1

Not until

strangers become locals

:

physical and digitally savvy markers of

high streets

October 2019

Abstract

As our

physical and abstract worlds

have

increasingly

become

entangled

,

their

relationship

in

our high streets

has become more unsettled.

“Networks are all edges… we thought there were

windows but actually they’re mirrors”

(Aranda, Wood, & Vidokle, 2015)

.

I

n the unfolding

drama around

high street

sustainabilit

y

we have

persist

ed

with the

wrong business model

;

shaped by retail

and cloud

ed by

the

digital

.

H

igh street

s

need

room

to

compete

,

to reshape

to

local

market forces

and

localized

profits

.

Because

one thing is certain. R

etailers will

always

return

. Especially

to strong community

-

driven demand.

This study will look at three

complementary

visually driven

ideas: spatial diversity

, urban markers, and spatial culture

;

in

the context of

previous

ly documented

case studies

and The Preston Model

.

The keys we need

to the top, middle, and bottom padlocks on the

door to

the future of our high streets

are

use

and

scale, business footprint, and

visual

sense.

Keywords

—

“

urban

”;

“

streets

”;

“

digital

”;

“heuristics

.

Introduction

T

his

is the

last

in

a

trilogy of papers, each of which are self

-

contained and can be read

independently of the others

.

T

he terms

high streets

and

main streets

can be regarded as the

same thing and are

used interchangeably.

The first

paper

looked at

ideas around

territorialisat

ion

(high streets as visual markers of our social)

and

the second

paper

focused

on

deterritorialization

:

the process of

alienation

and a heuristic dance that can transcend

that

alienation

.

In this

third and

final paper

we will look at

how by being physical

ly and digitally

savvy

we can reterritorialize

the local

, but not until strangers become locals

.

Reterritorialization

is a phase change from

a state of deterritorialization

, of a collapse in

meaning,

and

can be

described

as “

transformations which may

yield another identity

”

(De

Landa, 2006, p. 123)

. I

n this

study

that new

identity is the localisation of meaning.

Where

a

high street that

has

been alienated

is

reterritorialized by the localisation of

its

urban objects;

its boundaries the shimmer of recognition skirting the horizon. And while everything beyond

the shimmer rema

ins filled with strangers, the urban assemblages that make up the high street

are restored

in new emergent conditions of

meaning.

We exist with meaning through the analogy of ‘visual creasing’. It speaks to an archaic

reincarnation of the high street, arou

nd which we orient our lives. A high street can thus be

thought of as a visual crease in the otherwise inconspicuous landscape of the digital where

there are no visual creases, and “the ability to orient oneself in a meaningful way starts to

melt”

(Aranda et al., 2015, p. 8)

.

Several

case studies are referenced to support the key ideas of

spatial diversity, urban,

markers, and spatial culture

.

The concept of localising profits is a game changer and

,

along

with a strategy of adopting appropriate business models for the high street, wil

l go some way

in redressing the current perception of

lack of diversity

an

d

imbalance between digital and

physical

commercial activity

.

An over

-

reliance on unsustainable use is complicated by the

fact that retail especially is slowly killing off the prover

bial ‘goose that lays the golden egg’

:

the human cooperation and collective intentionality

(Searle, 2011, 2016)

that can be argued

underpins a high street

.

1

Not until strangers become locals: physical and digitally savvy markers of

high streets

October 2019

Abstract

As our physical and abstract worlds have increasingly become entangled, their relationship in

our high streets has become more unsettled. “Networks are all edges… we thought there were

windows but actually they’re mirrors” (Aranda, Wood, & Vidokle, 2015). In the unfolding

drama around high street sustainability we have persisted with the wrong business model;

shaped by retail and clouded by the digital. High streets need room to compete, to reshape to

local market forces and localized profits. Because one thing is certain. Retailers will always

return. Especially to strong community-driven demand. This study will look at three

complementary visually driven ideas: spatial diversity, urban markers, and spatial culture; in

the context of previously documented case studies and The Preston Model. The keys we need

to the top, middle, and bottom padlocks on the door to the future of our high streets are use

and scale, business footprint, and visual sense.

Keywords — “urban”; “streets”; “digital”; “heuristics.

Introduction

This is the last in a trilogy of papers, each of which are self-contained and can be read

independently of the others. The terms high streets and main streets can be regarded as the

same thing and are used interchangeably. The first paper looked at ideas around

territorialisation (high streets as visual markers of our social) and the second paper focused

on deterritorialization: the process of alienation and a heuristic dance that can transcend that

alienation. In this third and final paper we will look at how by being physically and digitally

savvy we can reterritorialize the local, but not until strangers become locals.

Reterritorialization is a phase change from a state of deterritorialization, of a collapse in

meaning, and can be described as “transformations which may yield another identity” (De

Landa, 2006, p. 123). In this study that new identity is the localisation of meaning. Where a

high street that has been alienated is reterritorialized by the localisation of its urban objects;

its boundaries the shimmer of recognition skirting the horizon. And while everything beyond

the shimmer remains filled with strangers, the urban assemblages that make up the high street

are restored in new emergent conditions of meaning.

We exist with meaning through the analogy of ‘visual creasing’. It speaks to an archaic

reincarnation of the high street, around which we orient our lives. A high street can thus be

thought of as a visual crease in the otherwise inconspicuous landscape of the digital where

there are no visual creases, and “the ability to orient oneself in a meaningful way starts to

melt” (Aranda et al., 2015, p. 8).

Several case studies are referenced to support the key ideas of spatial diversity, urban,

markers, and spatial culture. The concept of localising profits is a game changer and, along

with a strategy of adopting appropriate business models for the high street, will go some way

in redressing the current perception of lack of diversity and imbalance between digital and

physical commercial activity. An over-reliance on unsustainable use is complicated by the

fact that retail especially is slowly killing off the proverbial ‘goose that lays the golden egg’:

the human cooperation and collective intentionality (Searle, 2011, 2016) that can be argued

underpins a high street.