Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Harringay's High Street & the Portas Review
How does our stretch of Green Lanes measure up against the issues raised by the Portas Review, published today?
If you've had a chance to watch the news today, you've most likely seen reference to the Portas report. I have a particular interest in it, since I'm passionate about the role high streets play in creating vibrant cohesive communities. So, I was very pleased to see Portas putting the issue of community at the heart of her argument:
I believe that our high streets are a really important part of building communities and pulling people together in a way that a supermarket or shopping mall, however convenient, however entertaining and however slick, just never can. They should become places where we go to engage with other people in our communities, where shopping is just one small part of a rich mix of activities.
She quotes 1960s sociologist Jane Jacobs to suport her cause:
“The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the two boys drinking pop on the stoop, hearing about a job from the hardware man and borrowing a dollar from the druggist.
Most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial, but the sum is not trivial at all. The sum of such casual, public contact at the local level – most of it fortuitous, most of it associated with errands – is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of personal or neighbourhood need…”
Jane Jacobs (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities
And she talks elsewhere of the dangers of dislocating people from identifying with their high street.
I completely agree. To me a high street should be the beating heart of a community. One where local people feel they belong and one which they want to inhabit. The absence of such a centre stifles the sense of belonging and the opportunities for casual community building that Jacobs describes.
"Understanding High Street Performance", the Companion Report to the Portas Review by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, suggests a future direction for our high streets:
Social value and the civic use of space are key to populating places that have lost some of their previous functions as places of trade: social exchange becomes as vital a part of the mix as monetary exchange.
As far as getting us from here to there is concerned, Portas stresses the involvement of the community as key:
I want local people to be co-creators of the space and take forward what they want to see on their high streets.....
I want to see high streets where localism really delivers integrated action from all the relevant stakeholders. Local authorities, landlords, retailers and the public working together to really animate the spaces they occupy, creating and nurturing their own unique place. Local people as co-creators and not simply consumers. Councils as managers and enablers. Landlords as long-term investors. Businesses as stakeholders
So, what do we have here in Harringay? Do we have a beating heart of which most of us feel a part? And if not what's to be done about it?
Portas is clear on what the first step should be:
The one – perhaps the only – thing everybody I have spoken to is agreed on is that for a high street to survive and grow it must have a very clear vision of where it wants to get to. And it needs co-ordinated planning and management to get there.
A start was made on that with the Harringay Charter (Please don't forget about it Council!) which was developed by residents, traders and the Council. It calls for "A Green Lanes reborn". It says:
We want to be proud of our area by creating a high street with a lively and varied mix of businesses where the community can feel safe and enjoy the atmosphere.
We want to celebrate and enjoy our Victorian street with buildings and facades restored to show them at their best.
So we have at least a starting point, but moving it on will take some imaginative and decisive leadership from our elected representatives and council officers.
For me, getting this right and building a high street which we all feel we belong where "we go to engage with other people in our communities" will define Harringay's future?
Attached below:
The Portas Review
Companion Report by Dept for Business, Innovation and Skills, "understanding High Street Performance"
Tags for Forum Posts: green lanes
- Attachments:
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Hugh on
-
I guess what's missing from that is something along the lines of "We're also pleased to see that Portas is proposing to undo the damage we did by flooding Britain's high streets with betting shops. We hope this wil be done in advance of any future election to avoid it becoming a damaging issue".
-
Permalink Reply by pamish on
-
Note Harriet Harman's bit. No apology though, and no suggestions how to reduce what's happened already.
-
Permalink Reply by clyde on
-
Also down the road in Upper Street you see many empty units and at night, pubs with bouncers. It not a pleasant place to be on a weekend evening. The young media set who created the buzz of the street year ago have grown up and moved on and their media replacements now all live in Clapton, Dalston and Seven Sisters. These areas are cheap so are attractive the new wave of creatives and artists.
The report shows that that the High Street needs to move with the times. Just "bunging" in a few chains or a shopping mall worked in the 60's and 70's but times have moved on but Planning and council thinking regarding the creation of "town" centres as a hub hasn't.
Most people want a pleasant place to shop and have access to convenient products. However the internet removes the needs of out of town big stores. So there is also the need for social shopping as Portas and Jane Jacobs point out.
Take the horrible towers plan for Wards Corner. Same old 70's design, bung a few tower blocks over mall units to attract in Iceland and the people will flood in, I think not. The plan should be like Green Lanes in that restore the old building is hte way to go, keep the flexibility of smaller units to respond to the customer. Plus there is the market as well. This contains the largest Latin American Market in the UK; it could be expanded to create a real anchor tenant the sort of thing people cross town for. That is the thing that attracts and keeps the creatives. Plus In West Green Road the Green Lanes equivalent of the area you can buy goat’s milk plus some organic goods as the small shops are responding to the new incoming community.
Haringey need to learn more from Hackney. Look at the amazing pop up Box Park. Small units in shipping containers, they have embraced the concept of short term-ism. No empty sites for them just opportunities; have a pop up restaurant, shop or theatre. Temporary use appears a dirty word in Haringey, I sometimes think the council actually like having buildings empty to make a place look worse so they can demolish and claim the area needed regenerating. Plus they allow big corporations in which they have no control over. Just look at the TFL plans to widen not narrow the High Road at Seven Sisters when it is traffic volume that makes the site unattractive or all the empty semi underground shop units at Tottenham Hale (which looks exactly like the design of Archway towers) so bad planning repeats and our High Street die.
Our council seems to have failed to understand long term regeneration is about quality of life not ugly flats and shopping malls and new build does not equal regeneration.
-
-
What's becoming more and more clear is that the Area Plan for Seven Sisters as published in 2004 (?) which produced the Grainger disaster is now no more viable than my plans to open a tea shop in my front yard. The High Street as a string of multiples selling imports direct is dead. Even the purpose-built 'Malls' are collapsing. Online shopping will take most of the Mall stuff, leaving a few really good or huge ones to allow hands-on choosing. I look forward to hearing what the new plans are for 7Sis, at the Area Assembly on Monday. It has to be a plan with a vision that reaches decades hence, not just till the next election.
-
Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
-
The malls in our high streets, especially so close to the transport links, networking and power, are a fantastic opportunity to invest in data centres. The landlords could make much more by converting the inside of the malls to a data centre and leaving the high street outside as shops (without competition from the malls). They won't do it though, I mean, with investment returns like that surely it must be risky, eh Charles?
We would see no real difference to our high streets and benefit from the kind of diversification a professional investor could only dream of.
-
-
Box Park - just had a browse. Interesting, except this one is focused on fashion which of course has no sustainable future. There's room for a small one now on the Carpetright site - could this be a (temporary) way to start the regeneration of the north of Tottenham?
I will not comment on the demographic omissions on their promotional video.
-
-
You can put datacentres into shipping containers too! Does nobody else see the synergies? Shall I just crawl back into my geek hole?
-
-
They provide employment. They always need to be close to good transport links. One in Wood Green would probably be housing equipment moved from the City of London which is requiring power and cooling already but also taking up valuable office space. Heat can be an energy source. And for the people who work in the datacentre, it must be nice to think that your employers main concern was to put it somewhere remote and icey.
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
