“We need new narratives for inner cities — for a long time.”
Inner cities, especially shopping streets in city centers, were already facing major challenges before the COVID crisis. A decline in visitor frequency, shorter lengths of stay, and structural change in retail and gastronomy can be witnessed everywhere in city centers. Retail is particularly affected, as purchasing behavior has changed significantly in recent years, not least due to online retailing. The retail crisis has had a major impact on today’s inner cities, which in many places are dominated by retail, and presenting entire city centers with an identity crisis. The old “shopping city” model is faltering. It’s time to find new ways to create downtown attractiveness and vitality.
The COVID crisis has exacerbated this dire situation for retailers. It seems the pandemic is a veritable fire accelerator for traditional retailers. Online retail is booming and generating record sales, while many bricks-and-mortar retailers, chain stores, and shopping centers are struggling.
Lockdown as an opportunity
Solutions to thew problem typically follow the motto “Away from sales to more event planning and experiences, individual advisory skills, and the optimization of the quality of stay in stores.” This is a major shift, and already there are sustainable and attractive examples of it such as Samsung’s flagship store (the “Samsung 837”) in New York. This concept is not about selling products and more about offering a local meeting point that constantly attracts people with exciting events and product experiences.
However, these measures and impulses do not go far enough for city centers. They’re an exception to the increasingly unimaginative and interchangeable mainstream in inner cities. We need solutions to the structural problems of many inner cities, which will continue to suffer from the dominance of retail and disconnection from the urban community. We should use the lockdown as an opportunity to think a few steps ahead. For vital and sustainable cities to emerge, a conceptual liberation from the inner-city models of the past is required.
The goal for the inner cities of tomorrow should be to foster a sustainable hybrid model that provides a balance of living, working, open space + culture, representation + public services, and retail. The challenge here is to derive a relevant mix of uses from the identities and needs of the people onsite and to translate it into concepts for the entire city center.
Offenbach as pioneer
An interesting urban development program that’s pioneering this approach is unfolding in the city of Offenbach am Main in Germany. Here, the city’s decision-makers worked with city planners from “urbanista” to develop a vision for the future city center. They set themselves the goal of designing a “POST-Shopping City” that creates a (new) link between the city and its residents and promises lasting relevance. For example, projects are being initiated such as a “test room avenue” for local start-ups and the “Kosmopolis department store”, where customers can experience regional products, a canteen, and a cultural hub under one roof. These concepts are based on the needs of local residents and are based on the sustainable goal of making the city center more attractive, locally relevant, and vital through diverse uses. It remains to be seen whether every measure in this concept will be successful, but the model has huge potential to be a benchmark for future cities.
Even more crucial for future cities are master plans for vital downtowns. They must reflect an understanding of the identity of the place and bring together a mix of attractive uses for residents. These plans will create the basis for an attractive new promise, a new narrative, and a new role for the inner city.
Be pro-active and take advantage of opportunities
On one hand, inner cities must clarify their new role within the urban community and be able to deliver “new” narratives and a locally relevant promise. On the other hand, it is important to identify and tackle the right levers to give initiatives the right impact — and to implement them.
One important lever for the development of a relevant mix of uses in inner cities is cooperation among all stakeholders (i.e., residents, local traders, associations, etc.), the municipal administration, and decision-makers in the urban development programs. Different participation formats (e.g.,“Beweg dein Quartier” an initiative in Essen/Germany) should be standardized and integrated into the process. The management of existing tenant also needs a new framework and should take a path of self-determination, initiative, and self-administration of the inner cities (e.g., by creating a business improvement district). Local initiatives (i.e., financial support programs, new financing models, and mentorships) could also find support here and bring the diversity of the city into the inner cities.
Furthermore, city centers must understand today’s trends in usage clusters — living, working, open space / culture, representation / co-determination and trade / supplies — as opportunities. A whole range of initiatives are available to make inner cities more vital and attractive in the future. We just have to use them.
Ultimately, these thoughts only represent a glimpse of the possibilities for the inner cities of tomorrow. Now is the time to think further forward, tackle problems, and get the right people to the table make inner cities sustainable for the future.
Sources:
https://architectus.com.au/insight/q-architecture-path-to-cities-of-the-future/
https://bewegdeinquartier.de/ (german)
