Why is it so difficult to build a high street?

Every masterplan for a new settlement will include a high street. The lovingly rendered illustrations will show mothers with push chairs strolling past local shops, artisan bakers, cafes and maybe even a pub. And yet these streets are almost never built.

Over the last few months we have been editingTales of the High Streeta project that seeks to tell the story of a hundred high streets. In my next few columns I will be sharing some of these stories, and I thought a good place to start was the new settlement of Cambourne.

坎伯恩的总体规划是由特里·法雷尔在20世纪90年代中期制定的。它展示了三个村庄，下坎伯恩，上坎伯恩和大坎伯恩，围绕着村庄的绿色建筑，并与一条商业街串联在一起，最终形成一个繁荣的村庄中心。事实并非如此。

Cambourne is largely complete with 6,600 homes and 10,000 people. Yet the high street is lined with carefully mown grass where the shops should be. There is one commercial block with a few shops, a café and even a pub, however the real shopping is done at an enormous Morrisons just to the north of the high street that never was.

The shops, so it is supposed, will not be viable until the settlement is largely complete

So Cambourne’s population of 10,000 supports just 25 shops. Compare this to two of our other ‘tales’; Ludlow, with a similar population, has 253 shops (including 20 pubs) or Totnes with a smaller population and 276 shops. This despite the fact that the average household income in Cambourne is twice the figure in Ludlow and Totnes. Cambourne’s households generate half a billion pounds of spending power a year but not enough to build a high street.

There are three reasons for this.

首先是分阶段;在早期阶段，人口很少。因此，人们认为，在定居点基本建成之前，这些商店是无法生存的，到那时，家庭将习惯于在其他地方购物和社交，很可能是开车。

The second is the commercial model for new development. In Ludlow and Totnes the shops were built over many years, the capital costs have long been paid-off and property costs are low.

By contrast a new high street must cover the costs of the land and construction and still produce a return in 10 years. Independent shops will be unable to fund the fit-out of shell units or provide the covenants required by investors. Lettings will therefore be confined to a small pool of the usual suspects; one of the coffee chains, a metro supermarket, possibly a chemist or bookmaker.

There is a place that has overcome these problems

The third problem is the way that catchment populations are calculated. While the populations of Cambourne, Totnes and Ludlow are similar, their catchment populations, as calculated by Experian, vary hugely. Cambourne’s is just 4,000 compared to 20,000 in Ludlow and 60,000 in Totnes.

虽然事实是，现有的城镇服务于更广泛的区域，但集水区的人口是一个稍微人为的数字——康伯恩的人口甚至没有包括它自己的全部人口。尽管如此，这还是很重要的，因为小区人口是零售开发商和租户投资决策的基础之一。

There is a place that has overcome these problems. The new settlement of Nansleden in Newquay developed by the Dutchy of Cornwall may have only completed a few hundred homes, but it already has a high street with 3 cafes, a florist, wedding shop, bakery, farm shop, deli, yoga studio, wine shop and even a pet shop. How has this been done?

The trick has been to treat the shops as a non-commercial element like the roads and the schools. Build the shops in advance of demand, fit them out with a shop front and services so they are ready to use and let them below market rent on short leases to hand-picked independent businesses.

The problem lies not with the designer but the financial model

这并不像听起来那么不商业化。商店单元建在公寓下面，分担建筑成本，而企业确实会支付租金，随着定居点的扩大，租金会随着时间的推移而增加。更重要的是，一条繁荣的商业街的存在为新住宅的价值创造了奇迹。

This is not what happened in Cambourne. There have been attempts to attract a developer to build the town centre, the most successful of which resulted in a solitary row of shops and was only viable because it was cross subsidised by the big box units. These of course undermined the prospect of the rest of the high street ever being built.

As with many of the issues I have discussed in this column, the problem lies not with the designer but the financial model. Until this changes, those lovingly rendered high street illustrations will remain a fantasy and we will continue building car dependent new settlements.