Not quite the ‘death of the high street’ in UK city centres: Rising vacancy rates and the shift in property use richness and diversity

Abstract

This paper explores the inter-connections between property use diversity, change of use, and the adaptive capacity within urban retailing systems. The retailing centres of five UK case study cities, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, and Nottingham, are examined over a twenty-year period using original databases on property use and geospatial mapping techniques to employ property use richness and diversity metrics in a novel manner. Overall, the analysis finds property use richness has generally risen as comparison retailing and financial services have contracted, to be replaced by hospitality, leisure, and residential uses. However, this re-balancing has not been even across retailing centres and is outstripped by rising vacancies. The study also reveals spatial variation in change of use and use diversity and richness as retailing centres slowly adapt, implying that future policymaking should focus on creating more resilient, mixed use city centres as an alternative to the single use retail high streets of the past.