The Battle for the High Street

PHIL HUBBARD

THE BAT TLE

FOR THE

HIGH STREET

Retail Gentrification, Class and Disgust

The Battle for the High Street

Phil Hubbard

The Battle for the

High Street

Retail Gentrification, Class and Disgust

ISBN 978-1-137-52152-1 ISBN 978-1-137-52153-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52153-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947442

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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Phil Hubbard

King’s College London

Department of Geography

London, UK

v

Acknowledgements

This book is one that has been intimately shaped by my personal

circumstances, and in particular, returning to the county of my birth

some quarter of a century after leaving. In that time, much had changed

in the local towns and villages, including in some cases a rapid gentrifi￾cation that had changed these places beyond recognition. Reflecting on

some of these changes, and discussing these with my work colleagues,

spurred me to write this book, which in many ways is my attempt to

show how the sociological preoccupation with class (and the language of

class) remains relevant to urban theory, notwithstanding the popularity

of alternative ways of reading the urban landscape. In this sense, I am

particularly thankful to those colleagues at the University of Kent who

indulged me over the last five years as I have suggested ways in which

the reconfiguration of Whitstable and Margate (and some of the other

places that feature prominently in this book) illustrate wider transitions

in the nature of post-industrial culture. Here, I should particularly men￾tion Anne Bottomley, David Garbin, Ben Hickman, Dawn Lyon, Vince

Miller, David Nettleingham, and Tim Strangleman, as well as acknowl￾edging the support of the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social

Research, which provided a stimulating inter-disciplinary environment.

I have also benefitted from discussions with graduate students, especially

Jon Ward, whose work on artistic labour in seaside towns significantly

informed the writing of Chap. 9, and Deanna Dadusc, whose research on

vi Acknowledgements

urban social movements and squatting has challenged me to think about

questions of resistance in an era when gentrification often seems the ‘only

game in town’. Beyond Kent, I owe a debt of thanks to those who looked

at this book in part or whole and suggested changes (inevitably, not all

of which I was able to accommodate): these include Nick Clarke, Louise

Crewe, Suzanne Hall, Brian Hracs, Mark Jayne, Loretta Lees, and Neil

Wrigley. I am also grateful to the Departments of Geography at Malmo,

Birmingham and the LSE where I presented versions of these chapters,

as well as the different public audiences I have presented this research to

in Margate. This said, some of the arguments in this book have had a

much longer gestation and have benefitted from varied intellectual inputs

from colleagues and friends over two decades. For example, some of the

material on disadvantaged consumers presented here is informed by the

work I conducted with colleagues at Coventry University in the 1990s,

and here I should particularly mention Nigel Berkeley, Phil Dunham

and Peter Williams. Likewise, material on nightlife and the 24-hour city

was presented and discussed with numerous colleagues at Loughborough

University with a Nuffield-funded project on cinema-going helping focus

my thinking on the move ‘out of town’ as discussed in Chap. 3. The argu￾ments presented in Chap. 6 are in part derived from a study undertaken

with Rachela Colosi supported by Economic and Social Research Council

grant ES/J002755/1 ‘Sexualisation, nuisance and safety: sexual entertain￾ment venues and the management of risk’. Here, thanks are owing to

Rachela Colosi and the Research Associate on that project, Billie Lister.

Finally, I owe a massive debt of gratitude to Eleanor for her close and

critical reading of the manuscript, as well as her constant support during

the twelve months it took to complete it.

vii

Contents

Acknowledgements v

1 Introduction: Gentrification and Retail Change 1

2 The ‘Death’ of the High Street 15

3 Going Out of Town 45

4 Reviving the High Street 67

5 24-Hour Party People 89

6 Sexing It Up 119

7 Place Your Bets 147

8 Fast Food, Slow Food 169

viii Contents

9 Bohemia on the High Street 199

10 Conclusion: Vital and Viable? 227

Index 247

ix

Fig. 2.1 A familiar sight on the British High Street (photo: author) 16

Fig. 2.2 Boutiquing, Whitstable, Kent (photo: author) 29

Fig. 2.3 An unhealthy High Street? (photo: author) 37

Fig. 3.1 Keeping up appearances at the mall: Gunwharf

Quays Designer Shopping Outlet, Portsmouth

(photo: author) 54

Fig. 3.2 The modern agora: Stratford Westfield Shopping Centre

(photo: Sirje S. Flickr, used under a CC-BY license) 61

Fig. 4.1 Window display, former Primark store, Margate, 2015

(photo: author) 72

Fig. 4.2 Gentrified consumption, Margate Old Town (photo: author) 80

Fig. 5.1 A soulless drinking pit? ‘The White Lion of Mortimer’

Wetherspoons, Mitcham, London (photo: Chris

Marchant, Flickr, used under a CCBY license) 99

Fig. 5.2 The Overdraft micropub, in an old bank building, Shirley,

Southampton (photo: author) 111

Fig. 6.1 Sex on the High Street—Ann Summers shop, Southampton

(photo: author) 126

Fig. 6.2 A touch of class? Poster outside now-defunct Gentleman’s

Club G7, Loughborough 2013 (photo: author) 136

Fig. 7.1 A betting shop ‘cluster’ in Salisbury (photo: author) 159

Fig. 7.2 A typical British betting shop interior (photo: author) 165

List of Figures

x List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 A fast food landscape, Highfields, Southampton

(photo: author) 174

Fig. 8.2 Produce at Whitstable farmer’s market (photo: Katie Blythe,

used with permission) 186

Fig. 9.1 Gentrifiying Hoxton: Banksy’s (2007) stencil mural

‘Sweeping it under the carpet’ (photo: Matt Brown,

Flickr, used under a CCBY license) 207

Fig. 9.2 Ironic consumption in Deptford: The Job Centre bar

(photo: Matt Brown, Creative Commons CC BY) 209

Fig. 9.3 Affordable art and Banksy reproductions in the window

of the ‘Pop-up Margate’ shop (photo: author) 219

Fig. 10.1 The onset of gentrification, London, 2014 (photo: Sara

Kelly, Flickr, used under a CCBY license) 235

Fig. 10.2 Disordered but diverse? Priceless DIY store, Margate

(photo: author) 241

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 1

P. Hubbard, The Battle for the High Street,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52153-8_1

1

The literature on contemporary cities is vast, constantly evolving as it

struggles to keep pace with frenetic processes of urban restructuring.

But for the last 50 years or so, one theoretical concept has consistently

been to the fore: urban gentrification. Originally invoked to describe the

social transformation of some of London’s inner city neighbourhoods via

the ‘sweat equity’ of owner-occupiers, the term is now routinely used

to describe any instance where landscapes of long-term disinvestment

are ‘upscaled’ through state funding, corporate speculation or individual

initiative. Around the world, we are seeing neighbourhoods long associ￾ated with working-class and minority populations being reinvented in

accordance with contemporary ideals of metropolitan living, with new

residents and tourists consuming these spaces as sites of leisured, middle￾class urbanity. Corporations search eagerly for new opportunities to

exploit the ‘rent gap’ between current and potential rents, often aided

and abetted by state governors keen to see an urban transformation. The

theories and experiences of gentrification first worked through in London

in the 1960s are thus being updated and revised as new landscapes and

spaces of gentrification become apparent elsewhere, including the global

South. Indeed, the putative globalization of gentrification has led some

Introduction: Gentrification and Retail

Change

scholars to suggest the pulse behind gentrification is now generalized, and

a key dimension of ‘planetary urbanism’ (Merrifield 2013; Wyly 2015).

But gentrification is not just diffusing globally, with the gentrification

‘frontier’ simultaneously moving out from the inner city to encompass

other locations. Affluent, cosmopolitan groups are colonizing outer as

well as inner suburbs, villages as well as urban neighbourhoods, provincial

towns as well as world cities. Many new inflections and varieties of gen￾trification have been delimited: black gentrification, super-gentrification,

gay gentrification, touristification, greentrification, studentification

and so forth (Lauria and Knopp 1985; Butler and Lees 2006; Gotham

2005; Smith and Holt 2007; Moore 2009). All demonstrate that specific

middle-class identities can become valued in processes of development

and regeneration and stress the locally diverse forms gentrification takes

as it becomes a global urban strategy (Smith 2002). All contribute to

our understanding of the processes of uneven development that are part

and parcel of our urbanized existence and stress that gentrification is not

always imitative, involving the intersection of generalized and local pro￾cesses that existing theorizations do not always fully capture (Lees 2012).

So the literature on gentrification has proliferated, expanding into new

territories and producing novel understandings of the urban process.

But despite this, some key battlegrounds of gentrification remain little

studied. Shopping streets provide perhaps the best example. Despite the

fact that the reinvention of local shopping streets as spaces of affluent,

leisured consumption is a globally recognized phenomenon, and pro￾foundly changing the character of some neighbourhoods, retail change

remains poorly theorized as a form of gentrification. Indeed, in some

overviews of gentrification (e.g. Lees et  al. 2011), retailing has hardly

been mentioned at all, with local shopping streets presumed to reflect the

socio-economic character of surrounding neighbourhoods rather than

in any sense driving the changes occurring in those spaces. So while it

has been suggested local retail provides ‘a particularly sensitive indica￾tor of the balance of forces in gentrified neighbourhoods’ (Bridge and

Dowling 2001: 99), it’s new-build, ‘scorched-earth’ gentrification, and

the redevelopment of housing, that tends to preoccupy gentrification

scholars, not the slow, sometimes subtle changes occurring on local shop￾ping streets. As Katharine Rankin and Heather McLean (2015) assert,

2 The Battle for the High Street

the consequence is that retail spaces have been imagined as essentially

distinct from the residential spaces and neighbourhoods characterized as

the leading edge of the gentrification frontier.

However, this epiphenomenal view of retail change is being challenged

in the emerging, mainly North American, literature that’s beginning to

acknowledge the fundamental importance of retail change in instigating

gentrification (e.g. Deener 2007; Sullivan 2014; Rankin and McLean

2015; Kern 2015a; Kasinitz and Zukin 2016). In these studies, the

replacement of corner cafés by coffee shops, convenience grocery stores

by delis and pubs by wine bars is depicted as a vital first stage in gen￾trification processes which culminate in the upscaling of entire neigh￾bourhoods. New  York-based cultural commentator Sharon Zukin and

colleagues have provided one of the most influential accounts of these

processes:

At least since the 1970s, certain types of restaurants, cafés and stores have

become highly visible signs of gentrification… Although the archetypal

quiche-serving “fern bars” of the early years have long since yielded to wine

bars and designer clothing boutiques, these stylish commercial spaces still

embody, serve, and represent a powerful discourse of neighborhood change.

On the most basic level, the new consumption spaces supply the material

needs of more affluent residents and newcomers… But they also supply

their less tangible needs for social and cultural capital… New stores, cafés

and bars become hangouts for both bohemians and gentrifiers or places for

social networking among stroller-pushing parents and underemployed art￾ists and writers. (Zukin et al. 2009: 47)

Zukin et  al. (2009) argue the economic and cultural entrepreneurs

establishing new retail businesses in previously deprived districts (e.g.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn) seek to fabricate an ‘aura of authenticity’ based

on the working-class history of the area. In doing so, they initially capital￾ize on their reputation among a youthful, artistic clientele (‘hipsters’) seek￾ing an authentic alternative to mainstream consumption space, attracting

a broader middle-class consumer base over time. And, as Zukin et al.

(2016) note, even modest injections of investment can bring a ‘new look’

to a shabby shopping street, with good write-ups in the local media and

word-of-mouth publicity bringing more new investors: shoppers, diners,

1 Introduction: Gentrification and Retail Change 3

residents, real estate developers, and retail entrepreneurs. In time, rents

rise, with the synergistic combination of retail and residential gentrifica￾tion ultimately producing neighbourhoods associated with conspicuous

consumption and middle-class rituals of belonging. Longer-term work￾ing-class residents are priced out of the neighbourhood, and cast cultur￾ally adrift.

Here, Zukin et  al follow in the tradition of Michael Jager (1986),

Caroline Mills (1988), David Ley (2003) and others who have focused

on the consumption values of the gentrifying middle class when explain￾ing the remaking of the central city. The argument here is well rehearsed.

Middle-class gentrifiers, who lack the resources to copy upper-class con￾sumer habits, rely on the revival and refurbishment of older, cheaper

properties prized for their aesthetic potential, and they set about fur￾nishing their house with similarly recycled vintage goods. This can even

manifest in ‘poor chic’ (Halnon 2002), the process in which the middle

classes seek to display distinction via the ‘victorious’ aesthetic consump￾tion of lower-class symbolism. But poor chic does not involve the simple

purchase of, and display of, second-hand or discount goods. It requires

serious disposable income to clean and restore such goods, turning the

merely shabby into ‘shabby chic’. Working class authenticity is cherished,

but in the process, it’s symbolically consumed until little trace of its ‘dirty’

working-class background remains. Retail gentrification literatures sug￾gest the same can be said of entire neighbourhoods, with ‘sketchy’ or

marginal districts becoming ‘crunchy’ or ‘hip’ neighbourhoods before

ultimately becoming internationally branded ‘trendy’ neighbourhoods

by virtue of the arrival of designer stores and Michelin star restaurants

(Kern 2015a).

A key idea in the retail gentrification literature is that the remaking of

the retail landscape is central to the processes by which the inner city is

served up as a spectacle to be consumed by the middle classes. Local shop￾ping streets become not just spaces of economic and social reproduction,

but spaces thoroughly integrated into circuits of middle-class display:

Designer shops, art galleries, bars and restaurants form the background to

a landscape of people in semi-public space (tables on the footpath they

must pay to occupy) watching the passing parade and sipping chardonnay

4 The Battle for the High Street

from a boutique winery, beer from a microbrewery, coffee from organic

beans grown in the developing country du jour. (Shaw 2008: 1698)

This colonization of space by conspicuous middle-class consumption sug￾gests that the displacement of existing populations can occur through a

range of different gentrification mechanisms. For example, whilst displace￾ment is often thought to occur mainly via landlords raising rents, render￾ing housing unaffordable for existing residents (Newman and Wyly 2006),

or through authorities instigating ‘revanchist’ policing strategies (Smith

1996), studies of retail gentrification show it can also occur through the

indirect displacement instantiated by wholesale cultural changes at the

local scale. Retail change is thought particularly significant in this respect:

businesses change, pubs become wine bars, corner shops becomes delis,

the greasy spoon café becomes a barista-style coffee shop and so on. Before

long, the nature of the entire neighbourhood changes, and families and

communities that may have been in place for years are broken up. As

Peter Marcuse (1985: 207) asserts, ‘when a family sees the neighbourhood

around it changing dramatically, when their friends are leaving the neigh￾bourhood, when the stores they patronise are liquidating and new stores

for other clientele are taking their places … then the pressure of displace￾ment is severe’.

So while the improvement of shabby or part derelict shopping streets

may be widely welcomed, it’s clear retail change can drive long-term gen￾trification processes that are often far from benign. While advocates of

regeneration agendas promoting the introduction of wealthier groups

into middle-class communities defer (e.g. Freeman 2011), there’s little

evidence to back up claims that gentrification improves the conditions

of the working-class residents who remain in gentrified communities.

Indeed, most studies suggest displacement is a common outcome, with

those displaced seldom settling successfully elsewhere (Goetz 2003; Kleit

and Manzo 2006; Kearns and Mason 2013). So while retail gentrification

can enhance the quality of local shopping provision, provide new eco￾nomic opportunities and enhance the local built environment through re￾aestheticization, the benefits are unequally felt. It’s incomers who benefit

from retail gentrification, with longer-term residents often forced to relo￾cate where retail and cultural facilities are more in keeping with their tastes

1 Introduction: Gentrification and Retail Change 5