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Does 'affordable space' need a guarantee?
City authorities around the world are under pressure to provide "affordable housing" but can a case also be made for using the planning system to guarantee "affordable space" for local businesses?
The controversial idea is being championed by the UK think tank, the New Economic Foundation that wants such space included within in-town, edge-of-town and out-of-town retail developments.
It claims that without such "local competition policy" small, local and independent retailers will lose market access and that national and multinational retail chains will predominate. The result will be "cloned towns where the individuality of high street shops has been replaced by a monochrome strip of global and national chains."
The foundation says it has already surveyed a number of UK towns and found that 42% can be classified as "clones".
The foundation's report has created considerable debate in the UK but media attention has focused primarily on the report's league table of which town has the most "cloned" high street. The cathedral city of Exeter earned the title with just one high street shop out of 50 that was not owned by a chain group.
The description caused uproar in Exeter itself where the city centre manager, John Harvey insisted there were many independent stores in the side turnings off the main thorough-fare.
"I don't see it as a negative thing to have so-called clone shops," Mr Harvey told a BBC reporter. "Today's independents are tomorrow's chain stores and the shops that thrive are the ones that people spend their money in."
Nonetheless, Britain's small business pressure group, the Forum of Private Business, said it was all for creating "affordable space" in high streets for independent shopkeepers.
The forum estimates that across Britain some 20,000 small shopkeepers have gone out of business since 1997 as a result of competition from chain stores.
In its report, the New Economic Foundation suggests there are ways under existing UK planning laws for local authorities to oblige retail developers to include locally-owned shops in developments. It says another idea would be for local authorities to introduce a "local competition policy".
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Redefining public use
Another twist to the "affordable space" debate (see above) was found in America where the US Supreme Court has redefined the meaning of "public use" when it comes to imposing compulsory purchase orders. By a 5-4 ruling the court broadened the definition of public use to include government-planned commercial projects. In effect the ruling allows commercial developments to go ahead with the help of a compulsory purchase order if there are community benefits like "more jobs and increased tax revenue". One dissenting judge claimed the ruling left nothing to prevent the state "replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory." The American Planning Association has created a full briefing on the subject, plus a copy of the court decision, on its website.
Are lifestyle predictions wrong?
The urbanisation of the world may not be proceeding quite so fast as the UN predicted back in 2000. New research by French demographer, Philippe Bocquier, suggests the UN's calculation that 60.8% of the world's population will be living in cities and towns by 2030 may have been over-estimated by more than a billion people. According to M. Bocquier, in 25 years time 55.4% of the world's population - especially those from developing countries - will still be living in rural areas. In a statement released by his Paris-based Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement, M. Bocquier claims the UN got the figures wrong by basing its calculation on an extrapolation of urban development since the 1950s. "The urban way of life is often considered as a determining factor in the speed of demographic changes," he said. "The reduction of mortality and fecundity in the developing countries could be less than predicted. Moreover, these new projections bear considerable consequences for environmental policies. In a world that would be less intensively urbanised, the industrialised countries would still be the main producers of greenhouse gas emissions."
