What can Newton Stewart teach us about saving the High Street? And what towns like Basingstoke could learn from it?
This is a funny question that popped into my head while I was on a wee walk "down the town" in Newton Stewart a while back.
Could Newton Stewart teach the rest of the UK to "High Street"?Newton Stewart is a small little town that I have become very fond of over the years. Family live just outside of the town and over the last decade, we have spent a significant amount of time in the town during holidays, Easter and the summer.
It is nestled at the gateway to the Galloway hills and is near the Galloway forest park. Now I am a big town lad used to his Nando's. However, there is something about the lack of hyper-commercialisation that is very charming, and indeed in mind shows us how we should be approaching some of the issues facing the high street.
Some context about my home town Basingstoke
Being a lad from Basingstoke, Newton Stewart is the complete opposite of Basingstoke. Newton Stewart is small. Basingstoke is big. Newton Stewart has a high street. Basingstoke has a town centre shopping complex. Newton Stewart has only (roughly) three national chain shops - Aldi, Sainsbury and the Co-Op. Basingstoke has very few independent shops.
Basingstoke is, in a sense the "basic bitch" or "U Ok Hun?" of towns in the UK. Now I am not playing Basingstoke down hear at all. It is after all the place I was brought up and the place that gave me an education that allowed me to get into a good university and provided jobs for friends and family.
It is, however, stuck in the malaise that is affecting the "high street" across the country with chain stores slowly disappearing and with it jobs. The problem that many towns like Basingstoke have is the chain superstores have brought jobs but at a price. The chain stores and malls are shiny, but they have taken away local ownership, and the "social" spaces have become anything but social but controlled
Newton Stewart
Newton Stewart is not perfect. Most of the jobs and incomes to be had in the area are low-income compared with the South. However, taking the town at its face value, it has a lot that would be considered adequate and proper for a local town. Local people can afford the houses, there is a sense of community and heaven forbid as you amble down the high street you come across small charity shops, bakers, law practices doubling as estate agents, butchers, a hardware store, an absolutely brilliant cafe called Brew Ha Ha (if you are ever there try Haggis Penni) and of course the usual high street features of hairdressers and of course a smattering of take-aways. Or as they are called in Scotland - carry-outs.
As a town, it does lack shops selling some of what might be considered staples: clothing and fashion shops, and multiple chain restaurants like Nandos. However, the occupancy rate of shops is high, and chain stores are few and far between. But this type of high street needs to become the future.
Why? Local Ownership and Social Interaction. This local ownership is the difference between the empty high streets of towns across the country and places like Newton Stewart. When a national chain goes bust, it is mainly because the profit margins cannot be large enough across the store network. Some of the stores might survive a nationwide collapse. Generally, when they do go bust, there is a loss to the community and the high street.
The reasons to visit the town are reduced and thus footfall making it harder for other local chains to survive. However, in a small town with low rents, low business rates, and local ownership, things are different. Even if the shop or business owner is only looking to make a semi-decent wage, they are at least able to support themselves and provide the occasional local jobs. This factor means that money is spent locally, and turns into local profits and wages that are recycled in the local economy, unlike places like Basingstoke in which profits disappear into the international financial system.
Another benefit of the small-town feeling of walking down the high street is people chat with one another, and they appear to know one another. With the drive to "mallisation" across much of the country, every space is a commodity and turned into a ghetto of corporate control. The area is not for social interaction, but consumption and consumption only. Anything that deviates from this is pushed out, from social gatherings to political campaigning.
The modern high street, the shopping centre is controlled outside of the social space and does not have the best interests at heart. For instance, Festival Place Basingstoke's premier shopping destination was built and designed in the era of expanding chain stores. Indeed its mindset is still aimed at this marketplace even though the world has changed. As with many "mall" type centres, they struggle to allow local businesses to enter their guided, fluorescent streets.
So what does Newton Stewart tell us about the future of the high street So far I have been wittering on and rambling about a whole host of disparate ideas that have landed on the page in a hodge-podge fashion. However, I think that what I am getting at is this. Late-capitalist interests have colonised our social spaces, and through the pursuit of these interests, they have lost their value to us as local humans.
What even pre-roman to modern history teaches is that trading spaces like markets and bazaars have been focal points for the exchange. Not only of goods and services that we all need, but the transfer of social information, social capital, news, religions, and indeed matching making.
This colonisation has also up and down the country sucked profits and money out of local communities and put high streets (and with it local communities) at the behest of large corporations far far away. Thirdly, business rates are gutting our towns and cities, and in effect helping, e-commerce thrive in local villages and local towns and local economies.
Newton Stewart is not a modern town, and it is far from perfect; however, it shows returning high streets and marketplaces to their place as equally designed for both social interaction and the exchange of products is a bloody good thing. Also, Brew Ha Ha does great food! Go there, try it.