The ‘death of the high street’ is never far from the political agenda. Recent research from Southampton University found that people feel high streets have declined more than any other part of their local area over the past decade and that this is impacting on who they will be voting for.
The current government’s Pride in Place Strategy promises to inject money and focus into declining areas and give communities more power to create the neighbourhoods they need. This includes specific commitments around outdoor advertising.
What a ‘good’ high street looks like differs from place to place, but one thing we can probably agree on is that it isn’t filled with billboards and digital ad screens. Yet the current legislation around outdoor ads means that councils have few powers to stop the encroachment of these into public space, including on to our high streets.
What could a healthy high street look like?
We believe that a healthy high street is a place to which people feel a sense of belonging, that encourages community, and that reflects local values. People are proud of their public spaces and want to spend time there and welcome others too, with visible projects that support nature, local communities and vibrant local businesses.
These public spaces should be accessible to everyone and be able to be reached by integrated public transport links without a dominance of private cars. There should be pedestrianised areas with enough space for wheelchairs and pushchairs as well as designated bike lanes. There should be space for nature, trees and raised beds for community growing projects, homes for birds and insects, and space for children to play. There should be limited light pollution with businesses turning off lights at night and downward facing street lamps without LED lighting. There should be spaces for people to meet and congregate, from pavement cafes to benches and bandstands. It should also be a mixed use space including residential homes as well as businesses and food outlets, to make it vibrant, busy and safe throughout the day and night. It should be a space for community projects, murals, art and events.
And, what is missing from these visions of a high street? Outdoor advertising. This is because outdoor advertising, especially large digital ad screens, on street furniture and phone boxes, has a detrimental effect on public spaces. Residents report that the placement of outdoor advertising makes their neighbourhoods feel unloved, neglected, as places to just pass through, and for corporations rather than people.
Advertising units often block pavements and make them inaccessible to those with mobility issues or with pushchairs, they can also increase crime and anti-social behaviour. Create Streets found that traditional phone boxes are used primarily for advertising rather than as a community service, and new ‘communication hubs’, which include considerable digital advertising space, are often used by drug users and dealers, while both types of structure are frequently vandalised. Outdoor advertising sites can also be a magnet for fly-tipping, adding to the sense that they create a more industrial and corporate environment rather than public spaces for people and nature.
Impact on the local economy
Outdoor advertising often promotes multinational companies and products that are unconnected to the local area and are unhealthy for people and planet. Ad space is all too often unaffordable to local businesses re-enforcing the idea that those with the most money can place their messages in front of us without our consent. Shopping locally helps to keep money circulating in the local area, where it can be re-spent and increase economic activity locally. By comparison, purchases with bigger corporate brands, or online, siphon profits out of our communities to feed large executive pay packets, dividends to shareholders or even to offshore tax havens.
Some Business Improvement Districts are also opposed to billboards as they see them as indicating a place is to to drive through rather than somewhere people should stop to spend time and money in the local economy.
Therefore, to ensure that high streets feel welcoming, accessible and healthy, outdoor advertising, and unnecessary street furniture and infrastructure that is used for advertising, should be removed and replaced with nature, community art and playgrounds, or not introduced in the first place.
Reclaiming high streets
The high streets that people want to see are full of independent businesses, creating public spaces that bring the community together and providing the services that they need.
We believe that local communities need to have more of a say about what businesses and services are needed on their high street and what other infrastructure would be useful, as the Pride in Place Strategy promises. For example, in South Bristol, the local community have reclaimed walls previously covered by 2 large billboards for murals and plants to celebrate community, creativity and nature rather than consumerism.
The Government’s focus on high streets may be part of a wider political agenda but it is also an important part of actually creating the public spaces that people want to live in, and outdoor advertising will never be a part of this.
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