Place Remaking: Destination 2024
Today’s letter from the future is coming from 2024. Cities around the world will be incorporating the lessons learned from the pandemic to make them more resilient and better places to live.
Cities around the world are undergoing a period of renewal, far from being decimated by the pandemic, they are being dreamed anew, becoming more liveable and accessible places to live.
These shifts won’t be something that are only led by city planners, but by those businesses operating in these spaces. They will push this as a means of future-proofing these locations for future pandemics, while also encouraging mixed-use neighbourhoods, which are now starting to drive the necessary footfall to sustain businesses as office workers move towards more hybrid working cadences.
Landlords look back on 2021 as a pivotal moment that allowed them to radically reinvent locations to ensure that they were fit for the future, transforming locations like Oxford Street (with its current 40% vacancy rate) into thriving destinations once again.
In 2021, people started to consider what aspects of the pandemic-led shifts would be permanent and then started to alter space accordingly, taking bold steps forward to pull themselves out of the much lamented retail apocalypse that has been slowly killing many city precincts and malls. Rather than creating precincts based on use - entertainment, leisure, dining, business, retail, etc - neighbourhoods are becoming even more defined by culture and community.
Governments started trying to implement 15-minute cities - where people can get access to all of the things they need within a 15-minute journey (ideally by foot). They looked to planned cities in China, like the Xiong’an development, a “self-sufficient” city that incorporates local resource production and sustainability. The city includes buildings with communal greenhouses, solar panelled roofs, amid small workspaces that have 3D printing and rapid prototyping facilities to produce everyday goods.
One of the positive shifts that the pandemic drove was a deeper relationship with people’s local neighbourhoods. As de-globalisation and the lack of movement made societies more insular, people started to seek out more interesting high streets that create a sense of place. As it became safe to eat indoors again, people campaigned to retain the sense of connection that was generated by living in cities that were less car-centric, with more outdoor dining, more community spaces, and an increased focus on bike use.
This deeper connection to place has meant that people are becoming less interested in the thing that’s available everywhere, and more excited by the thing that’s indigenous and special in this location. (The obvious caveat to this being that vocal backlashes against Amazon’s dominance have not been sufficient and it continues to take share for commodity items, particularly as subscription models have become even more sophisticated and frictionless.)
Global brands have caught onto this and are amping up efforts to make new kinds of location exclusive products and retail propositions. For those able to travel, these items brought home from elsewhere have social cachet again (much in the same way a Gap sweatshirt might have had for me, as a young kid in Australia, in the 1990s).
This kind of intentionality was applied to new developments - take the Anya Hindmarch village in Belgravia, which saw the handbag designer open five sites on Pont Street in London. Beyond the brand’s flagship space offering its customised leather accessories, it also offers a pop-up space (currently a blow-dry bar to support the launch of Hindmarch’s book release If in Doubt Wash Your Hair, a self-help guide/career manual); a store dedicated to organisation; The Plastic Shop, dedicated to recycled plastics; and Anya Café, a 1950s-inspired dining destination. This cafe also taps into the desires of a younger, less-affluent consumer’s desire to buy into a brand, even at a lower price point.
But Hindmarch’s village was only a small sign of what was to come, with businesses like Macy’s working to revitalise the entire area around the Herald Square site, in the hopes of saving it from brutal Tiktoks like this one. The plans, now underway, include a $235m investment into the site that will also see an office tower built on top of the building.
The exodus of the rich to the suburbs has actually made cities more vibrant places. Falling rents, alongside the conversion of excess office space into mixed use developments have meant that those young people, who have spent the last decade being priced out of cities, have been able to return, drawn in by the things that have always brought people young people to cities — like-minded people, nightlife and economic opportunity.
With more affluent people moving to the suburbs, there’s an opportunity for businesses to bring amenities to those who used to live in the city. Companies like WeWork have pivoted to focusing less on opening co-working hubs in city centres and are instead focusing on helping companies create regional hubs and in commuter belts that allow staff to congregate closer to home. The dearth of attractions in some of these less central locations has enticed retailers to begin developing more experiential propositions in them, with vibrant dining, and entertainment. These secondary cities became more attractive when they began to realise that competition for mindshare in city centres is much higher (and continued logistics improvements makes online delivery evermore frictionless in them).
In other news:
I wrote in The Telegraph about finding the fun in getting dressed again and living out of two suitcases for six (now seven) months.
Someday, when I’ve calmed down, I’ll write about the swindle that is international removals and what it means to be a captive consumer.
If you made it this far - thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your feedback and what you want to hear about next - petah@petahmarian.com.