>> Parking charges are but only a small part ... town centres are simply inefficient and do not match customer requirements..................….
All of the above yes, and the time to preserve the town centres we loved has passed, there's no turning back the clock or reversing the trend. But where there are bustling town centres (and there aren't many) a managed transformation is better than general dereliction. The solution I suppose will differ from case to case but I can think of small towns that remain a destination for many, where small shops still prosper alongside new residential development and small business. It's true that they generally have what seems to me like an excess of restaurants, coffee shops (isofar as they have survived Covid) and estate agents but they are changing whilst somehow retaining a critical mass. To be fair they do tend to be in reasonably affluent areas where house prices are high.
Nevertheless I think there is a case the slanting planning towards towns. A lot of what has grown out of town has done so because it's cheaper and easier to use virgin land than brownfield, but if money and market forces are left untrammelled then the result will be that we simply and stupidly consume and concrete all the most accessible places, and in addition to losing our countryside we will at the same time have the wreckage of impoverished towns and cities and all their attendant problems to deal with.
The crooks currently in charge will have no reason to deal with this unless it just happens that their friends and future employers can make money faster by doing so, sad to say.
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 16 Apr 21 at 19:38
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