Collaborate, innovate, regenerate: how to revitalise town centres

The past few years have had a lasting impact on how town centres are used, and created challenges on how the mix of commercial, retail and social spaces can be achieved in a rapidly changing world.

The recent pandemic accelerated a shift in the way urban centres are used and how communities perceive them. Most towns have the same challenge of balancing their unique social and cultural elements with a declining retail sector – something that is historically seen as a USP.

Critical to this is not regarding the challenge as solely for the public or the private sector, but one which is best solved in collaboration.

Collaboration is king

There is a shift in the understanding that local authorities and the private sector have of the skills that each other can bring. The is leading to a new focus on working together, accelerated by the Levelling Up fund, to unlock new opportunities for developments that drive untapped potential in towns and cities.

This approach won’t happen overnight, but a collaborative approach will open up new funding streams that accelerate regeneration and bring spaces back to life more quickly than could be done by public or private sector alone, which we have seen with our work in Boston, Lincolnshire.

We recently worked with South & East Lincolnshire Councils Partnership to put together a Levelling Up funding bid to regenerate the Lincolnshire town’s urban centre, teaming up with stakeholders from a range of organisations to gather the information for the second round of bid funding.

The investment aims to transform the area by delivering a vibrant space with a focus on health and wellbeing, including a new medical centre, residential areas, a hotel, a civic office building, a transport hub and public realm.

Crucially, it revitalises an area that has suffered from retail losses in recent years and has acted as a barrier between different elements of the town. In this case, the site sits directly between transportation links and Boston town centre, but there are many sites across the UK that suffer similar fates and need some creative thinking around how they can be brought back to life.

Take cues from the past to inform the future

This creative thinking is a reason Chesterfield was chosen as the location for our most recent Towns of the Future roundtable. It is a prime example of both the problems faced, and the solutions posed when it comes to town centre regeneration.

Chesterfield is an example of a market town hit by challenges posed by both the pandemic and ongoing squeeze on living standards. As a result, it has a town square massively underused, but fundamental to what it has to offer.

It really is a ‘hidden gem’ – incredibly welcoming with a local council and business community very open to conversations. However, as with all towns, there needs to be promise of change and the excitement of live projects to show real change is coming.

A joint approach between the public and private sector has been key to bringing regeneration discussions forward, which is why Chesterfield is well-placed to make the right moves going forward. To continue the momentum, businesses in Chesterfield have to actively promote careers available in the town and the opportunity for people to lead fulfilling lifestyles.

Bringing the office to life

No roundtable on the future of towns is complete without a discussion about the office. Our perception of the workplace has undergone the biggest paradigm shift since the Industrial Revolution, with the balance of hybrid and in-office working naturally having a big impact on town centre spaces.

While a big part of this falls into making the office itself more of a welcoming, collaborative environment, the location in which the office sits is also going to have a significant impact on drawing people in who may have become used to home working.

As ever-increasing numbers of businesses rethink their office strategy and potentially look to relocate, our town and city centres need to be dynamic enough to make an irrefutable case to opt for office space there, rather than in an out-of-town business park.

Having people in offices and milling around the town centre has a real ripple effect. The debate over the effectiveness of home working will no doubt continue for many years to come, but the general consensus is that people coming to the office are looking for a good reason to be there, and a welcoming town centre environment plays a huge part in that.

Seize the opportunity

The fate of town and city centres in the UK has largely been framed by the decline in high street retail, but by combining a collaborative approach to regeneration with a holistic view of what people are looking for in a post-pandemic, hybrid working world, it can rightly be seen as a huge opportunity.

From our roundtable events, we know that there are so many towns in the UK that are struggling with the evolution away from retail and towards a more social and cultural offering, but the key takeaway from these discussions is that there is a real willingness to attract investment to make these locations places where people want to live, work and play.

While this provides a huge challenge for the public and private sector alike, we stand on the cusp of a huge opportunity to fundamentally reshape how our urban centres work for us.