Progress will unavoidably kill more and more physical shops, but this has huge cons: cities are emptier and more dangerous.
In the average European mediterranean city shops provide lights, vibe, safety.
As people feel less secure, because it's getting dark at 5-6 pm half the year (the time people usually leave work) and shops are closed, they also go downtown less accelerating the death of other businesses.
And the only people on the streets are either those returning home, drunks, or immigrants doing god knows what. And this progressive decay accelerates. The only shops left are then bought en masse by foreign entrepeneurs, often working the place with their families 16 hours per day to squeeze pennies.
Any random downtown in Italy bar the most touristic places that have people all year suffers of this, even major centers (100k+ citizens).
If you go out after 7 pm most of the year half the people downtown are immigrants selling drugs, doing petty crime or whistling and annoying women.
I see and live that, and have female family members and friends being assaulted by these people, and they are immigrants.
It's not a matter of skin color, but demographics.
They are young, male, unemployed and from a different culture, they are more prone to decaying and aggressive behavior. But it's a fact, they make the cities less safe and they dominate the stats in petty and violent crimes.
One of the only "facts" we know about crime is that it correlates very closely with poverty, which makes sense, since those who are doing well have more motivation to avoid disturbing the status quo.
Rents do get progressively lower in distressed areas because they are distressed, and higher in high demand ones, but that's not enough when less customers are entering your shops anyway.
Commercial units sit empty instead of lowering rents because of the 'extend and pretend' in lending. The banks can't afford to revalue commercial real estate at the current market rate. It's like the 70s again.
There's no design of anybody, red tape and taxes have always been there, but they are not a problem of many sectors, but commerce in particular in this period of time, and not just in Italy but globally.
Glasgow at one point had eight American Candy Stores that were always empty but been operational for years. Not even good American Candy.
When a lake spontaneously disappears you can see all the trash on the bottom because it's no longer obscured by the water.
When economic prosperity disappears you're left with baseline services that involve people and the government, because all the other activity that was obscuring it is gone.
it never ceases to baffle me to see the progressive cosmopolitan types being utterly detached from the reality they live in.
Parking is a massive blight on our cities (and suburbs and rural areas)
Or just accept the world has moved on.
If I go to my local high streets I either cannot park at all (all residents only permits or disabled or taxis only or bus stops etc) or I have to pay eye watering fees - e.g. £1 or 2 per 15 minutes. Council parking wardens will be out prowling looking for infractions and giving you a £80 fine without any grace period.
...Or I just go to a shopping center like Brent Cross and park for free with zero hassle.
Yes I can walk or take the bus to the high street, but that will turn a quick 20 minute errands I to a 100-120 minute roundtrip, with the discomfort of doing it with shopping bags on the return journey (and the buss will cost you more than parking and fuel, while being slower, less convenient, and less pleasant)
For what it is worth, I don't feel like crime or drugs are a concern, at least not in my part of London.
I will say, that sounds expensive for parking, but completely not out of line with what I would expect to pay for premium (location) parking, though I'm used to VHCOL parking rates and maybe you don't live in that big of a city.
£1.85 each ride. So £3.70 round-trip if you can do it in just two rides. There are discounts if you are quick (e.g. you might only pay once) but it is time dependent.
Or just drive directly and quickly with zero hassle for pennies of electricity and free parking in a shopping center.
Local business owners are taxed to death.
Meanwhile, multinationals with HQs in tax havens roll in and set up national branches. The local branches pay their HQs for imaginary "services" and "rights", allowing them to operate practically tax-free in the country.
Good luck staying open little guy. We're lucky we still have vape shops and nail parlours.
To be specific, Amazon (its business model) killed small* goods shops in city centers.
The only businesses still open are services (food/restaurants, health, etc). Because those need you to actually bring your own body near the bodies of others.
___
*: and big, see the Galerie Lafayette/BHV struggles in Paris, they sell items that can largely be delivered in 2 days buying directly from the brand or from Amazon
And of course let's not forget COVID, which was a major factor in destroying small business of any kind.
Big players similar to Galeries Lafayette also fell victim but for different reasons. First (I think) they tend to be well-staffed, so their costs are much higher than e.g. Zara. And second, outsourcing of manufacturing has made a visit to Lafayette kind of pointless: If you are to choose between 50 shades of "made in China", you might as well do it from the comfort of your home.
It's also a vicious circle : Because there is less and less physical shop selling specific goods, you have to turn to the internet, which mean local businesses get less traffic and die off. If you have any slightly niche hobby and do not live in a major metropolis, you are SoL. As an example, I would have to go 200km away to buy raw leather and leatherwork tools despite living in one of the biggest city in my country.
You expect retail outlets for that? 30 years ago when I was making my own shoes in London and wanted to buy hide I had to trail around grimy industrial areas to visit a wholesale warehouse and persuade them to do retail for a moment. (I bought my tools from other hobbyists.)
Possible solutions to this include 1. More stores introduce a paid membership. This is not a bad idea, a store pays for the cost of the physical location with the membership fee and has similar prices to online stores, and they have an incentive to maintain product quality, Costco is very successful with this model, but I'd be worried that that the model is begging for enshitiffication, you could really cash out on the store's reputation by lowering the product quality and increasing the costs and relying on the friction of the existing membership to keep customers for a fair while. 2. Stores focus on being an enjoyable experience, and hope that if you're spending enough time there, you're going to want to buy something. This is what Barnes and Nobles is doing, and most surviving malls. 3. Some sort of policy fix. I'd be in favor of an online shopping "tariff" designed to bring online prices in line with what it costs to run physical locations, collected by the feds and redistributed to localities. Has the minor downside that everyone but me would hate it, and it would be so monstrously unpopular that it could never happen. If we could figure out a way around that, though, it could be quite good.
There are still goods that are primarily bought in person, hazardous and large where shipping is prohibitive.
And the ones left aren’t paying taxes, or wages.
Even if you control for the Amazon factor or the Walmart factor by looking at services, the bulk of these "successful" businesses are either chains or owned by a bigger corperate entity that can do kind of the same thing.
I live in a little community outside Boulder, and we have a nice little main street area, only a few blocks, which is a good size for our community. There's a few restaurants, a cafe, a community space, some boutiques, all of which encourage foot traffic and liveliness. But recently, a little book shop devoted to kids books was forced out due to increased rent demands, and an architecture firm moved in. What was previously drawing maybe 100+ people a day to the main street now attracts 5 employees who work in a closed office. Not the end of the world for the main street, but if a few more shops make a similar decision it will be completely dead.
There's also the fact that property developers, commercial landlords, and institutional lenders frequently favor corporate tenants over independent operators. Rising property values and high commercial rents also price out local, independent owners.
However, there have been some exceptions under the New Urbanism banner where you see localized revivals. Some cities (like Jersey City) cap chain occupancy of retail space to 30%. Portland and Austin use zoning rules to make commercial real estate unattractive to chains. Commercial community land trusts can also be used to freeze rent and make space more affordable for local businesses. I doubt there's a one-size-fits-all approach.
I'm a Frenchman but I hold no particular dumb grudge against the English, I actually like them, their style, their music, what I perceive as their refinement as much as their capacity to be hilarious, quick with the banter, overall good lads
so a few years ago, I booked a trip to London, then a train to Northampton cause I wanted to see the city where all the good shoe manufacturers are based (I own a pair of Crockett and Jones and enjoy other brands like Cheaney, Trickers, etc).
what a BRUTAL wake up call, what was on paper a thriving manufacturing town with rich history turned out to be a completely derelict place, with boarded windows in the main streets, beggars, dollar shops, litter absolutely everywhere and the signs that the golden age of the town is LONG gone. I don't know what happened there, recession, Brexit, I really don't know but I ended up taking the train back to London earlier than anticipated, completely shocked by what I saw
Good manufacturing jobs were gutted and sent overseas with no thought or care what the impact on communities would be. In some places families are now on the third generation on benefits because there simply aren't any jobs and the ones that are available require skills that people don't have because they aren't taught them in school due to the obsession with the Victorian education model and the shortage of skilled teachers and training opportunities for young people.
At this point nothing except for a total economic rebuild will save the UK high street and there is zero political will to do that because the current broken system makes certain people money.
Also for Frenchman to say re les Anglais "what I perceived was their refinement"... there's a joke that the only people who think the English are refined are Americans (as we are a savage people).
it's the drunken brutes, the burping, clanic, air max 95-wearing savages, but it's also a culture where entire musical genres emerge, the country of Richard "Aphex Twin" James and Boards of Canada, the appreciation for gardens, the relentless success of great authors and directors
slightly different mix and I don't want to mistake one from another (total faux pas) but for me as an outsider, there's less of a difference
The manufacturing employees, such as there are, drive everywhere, often live far from town, shop online or at out-of-town megastores.
It's an individualist, selfish culture since Thatcher or before, there's little of the pride in local businesses or local culture that France enjoys.
Dumb Brits became pure consumers since 1982, and blame black people and Muslims for why there's "no British culture anymore", instead of recognising their role in making it happen.
- it's extremely diverse, in a way that no other big metropolitan cities I've visited really are (and way more varied and diverse than Paris). You feel that variety crossing a street, where you go from "oh what a nice place with great heritage buildings and all" to "oh I should keep my eyes open, sketchiness has increased dramatically in the past second"
- London during the day and London at night are basically two different ecosystems, love it during the day, not for me at night (too rowdy / wild)
And it’s true. Northampton is doing pretty great compared to a majority of the U.K.
As a Brit that’s moved to Australia let me say the kebab shops here are a revelation. The meat is nicely cooked, generally identifiable, and not swimming in grease. The bread is usually more like real Greek gyros bread, the salad fresh…
My memories of Kebabs in the UK is of very dubious slices of something coming off the elephant-leg at the back of the store, nothing you would ever consider when sober.
In the uk virtually all thrift stores are run by a well known charity and thus the locals call them charity shops.
I've seen shops in London that don't even bother having any products on display. Just many blokes and a till.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...