The UK isn’t short of shuttered storefronts. But the real vacancy is structural. A new report from the Centre for Cities lays out what too few local authorities—and even fewer commercial landlords—have been willing to say plainly: high street failure isn’t cosmetic, and it isn’t fixable through retail tweaks. It’s economic. And unless policymakers reverse the logic of urban design itself, the £5bn needed to revive city centres will only stall further decline.
In places like Bradford, Newport, and Blackpool, where shop vacancy rates exceed 16%, the gut instinct is to blame failing retailers, harsh business rates, or online shopping. But that story misdiagnoses the core issue. The most distressed city centres in the UK are oversupplied with retail relative to their population and undersupplied with both residential density and high-paying jobs. No foot traffic. No wages. No spend.
This makes the usual prescriptions—cutting parking fees, refreshing shopfronts, lobbying for rates reform—feel shallow. They are. The logic of retail as regeneration hasn’t held up for over a decade, but it continues to dominate both political talking points and local planning incentives. The Centre for Cities is making a harder, more pragmatic argument: you can’t save the shops if you don’t bring back the people.
The real distinction is between a shopper economy and a resident economy. Cities like York or London have evolved into mixed-use cores, where people don’t just visit—they live, work, and spend in the same area. That supports not just retail, but services, hospitality, and leisure, with income generated by the presence of well-paid workers and high-density housing. In those areas, high streets don’t need saving—they’ve already adapted. About £1 in every £4 is spent on dining and leisure, and retail footprints are appropriately constrained.
Contrast that with Bradford or Wigan, where it’s £1 in £10, and where the number of retail units still reflects outdated assumptions about central business districts. These cities haven’t just failed to diversify their high streets—they’ve failed to realign their entire city centre logic.
Much of this is legacy infrastructure: zoning rules that encouraged retail-first development, transportation that prioritised commuting rather than dwelling, and policy incentives that rewarded square footage over utility. The result is a surplus of underused storefronts that can’t be revived through marketing or marginal tax tweaks.
The real drag isn’t just economic—it’s design. Retail clusters were built on the assumption that centralised footfall would drive demand. But in a post-pandemic, hybrid, digitally connected economy, city centres need to justify their relevance to locals, not just visitors. That means jobs that pay, housing that scales, and amenities that anchor daily life. Not more shops.
Retailers are understandably lobbying for cuts in business rates and payroll taxes. But in many failing centres, commercial vacancies already mean no rates are being paid at all. Reforming the system may reduce drag for successful businesses, but it won’t fill the void left by the absence of high-value footfall. As Andrew Carter of Centre for Cities notes, these are not ratepayer failures. They are system design failures.
Worse, rates reform risks becoming a scapegoat for broader structural issues. A high street won’t bounce back just because it's cheaper to operate in. It bounces back when there's a reason for people to be there. That means economic regeneration, not retail rescue.
So what does regeneration look like under this new framework? In short: jobs before shops. That means focusing investment on housing density, transportation links to local employment, and incentivising office development or high-skill job clusters in the urban core.
That won’t be possible in every town. Not every city centre can or should become a tech or services hub. But where local economic anchors already exist—such as universities, hospitals, or business parks—urban planning must shift toward integration. The goal isn’t to save retail. It’s to rebuild the economic conditions that made it viable in the first place.
Some city centres, like those in Swindon or Slough, illustrate the challenge well. They have productive local economies, but city centres remain empty because the economic activity is spread across disconnected business parks. Unless those ecosystems are reintegrated—through zoning reform, infrastructure investment, and housing strategy—footfall will continue to bypass traditional high streets.
Meanwhile, cities like York succeed because of a different kind of ecosystem: compact design, tourism leverage, and resident-worker integration. It's not just a better strategy—it’s a better fit for the post-retail urban era.
The takeaway here is not retail versus online. It’s the end of retail as the anchor logic of local economies. Towns that bet on bringing people back to the shops will lose. Towns that bet on bringing people back—full stop—have a shot at recovery. Funding may still be necessary. But it must be directed toward structural redesign: higher-density housing, downtown job anchors, and transit that links people to both. This isn’t a cosmetic refresh. It’s a full reset.
The £5bn in potential funding shouldn’t be treated as a stimulus package for nostalgic infrastructure. It should be viewed as seed capital for an entirely new logic of city centre relevance. Because retail doesn’t drive cities anymore. People do.
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