High Streets for All

Greater provision of community gardens, including local fruit and veg growing initiatives to enable more affordable healthy eating but importantly to also widen the mental health benefits of growing and gardening. The divide between the haves and have nots on garden access became very pertinent during the pandemic - and now again during the current heatwave. We need to make more green space genuinely accessible and not just 'public' green spaces but community/neighbourhood areas that can't be closed to residents by councils (as happened during the pandemic, shamefully). One example I saw during lockdown was residents taking the initiative to clear weeds in corners of public space and plant wildflowers - this should be easy and available to all with councils encouraging local ownership

Every neighborhood should have at least one express shop /Tesco, Morrison, Sainsburry/ but not offlicenses as they rip off people and are focused mainly on alcohol.
And also one fast food chain should be presented.
In this way when person is getting home from work can buy food and groceries. 
Also this will make people to walk more often to shops and enjoy being outside.
The more shops the better.
Also some professions like accountants can be moved off the high street as they can work perfectly in 2/3 floor offices and shops to be created on their places.

High streets should not just be about spending money, keeping maintenance costs low and designing out the homeless / skateboarders. We need more visionary thinking for the design of high streets where there is space - things that would make people want and need to use the space near their homes more are: public toilets, drinking water fountains, less cars around, seating, eating spots, shade (design needs to start acknowledging the changes in uk weather) and pleasant things to look at and do - small play features, greenery, water features etc. Mare Street in Hackney is a prime example of a lost opportunity to develop a good bit of high street - it is bland, dull, sad looking and useless for cyclists. It also reinforces the message that poorer residents don't deserve fantastic spaces - just second rate ones. Instead of huge fast food places and endless chain stores, I would love to see a front-facing, small to medium size unit on every high street that is a community space for children's stay and play, toy library, one-stop community information shop, a place for older peoples tea-dance afternoons, community cooking lessons / community cafe location, with areas that could be hired out cheaply by local people for things like children's birthday parties, community meetings, choirs etc. These could also facilitate the employment of disabled people (check out Flapjacks cafe in Kentish Town and the Peter Bedford Holloway Road shop). These places would be a bit like more open versions of a surestart / community centre building. 

Spaces for people to go where they aren't always expected to spend money. Just want to chill out without breaking the bank.

Develop affordable co-working spaces to distribute opportunities better.

Allow for consume-free areas for social activities/meet-ups on high-streets - develop social capital.

Make public transport cheaper and more accessible.

Cycling/walking zones are great.

The 15 Minute City is a plan developed by Carlos Moreno that aims to reduce travel into the centre.  This may suit Paris; it is not good for London. The vibrant centre is key to our preeminence as a world city - kill off the City, the West End, the theatres, the restaurants, the department stores, the Museums and the galleries and you destroy the London we know and love. You also kill off the economic driver of UKplc.

So be careful what you wish for. Let's focus on 15 minute neighbourhoods with good active transport links to the Central Activity zone.

No one seems to have considered life with children. We're not all lucky enough to have a great schools or nurseries within 15 minutes walk from our house. So some of us have to use cars...we can't put our kids all on the back of our bike! What are the plans to invest in the education system and focus on underperforming schools within each borough?    A lot of local High Streets have issues with gangs, muggings and general criminal activity. What are the plans to combat this? The knife crime in Islington is through the roof and the general lack of respect for the local authority is disgusting! Until these issues are addressed I fear for my children's future and struggle to see how staying in a 15 minute catchment with benefit them! 

This has undercurrents of social engineering and feels very dangerous to limit peoples freedom of choice of where they want to go to live their lives.  Nor does it support the notion of london as a capital city which has lots of business located centrally that act as a magnet for both foreign tourists and national tourists that all generate revenue for the capital.  

Proper consultation, what about elderly and disabled , feels disabled are being made prisoners in little ghettos,  plus registration of cyclists,  car obviously do more damage to society but a proportion of Male cyclists seem full of testosterone and aggression 

Sounds good to me, though the High Street needs to be about more than shopping, much of which will probably remain online. Most places have more than enough cafes but some inexpensive community meeting places would be useful.

 Support local businesses. Do we need another Just Eat, Pret, Mc Do, etc... to live? 
 Quality food is also served. That is also a consumer responsability but the govt could think of a scheme to hep set up local businesses.

This is great, I really resonate with the direction of this vision. A couple of things I'd like to lift up:

- Accessibility: so so many shops, cafes, restaurants etc remain inaccessible to many people, and that's not just about the lack of ramps to front doors - there are a host of features needed to meet a variety of access needs. Also, for many people walking 15 minutes to a shop isn't feasible, so it'd be great if this design included accessible transport for those who can't easily walk or cycle. As we're having to redesign infrastructure to accommodate social distancing, this feels like a unique opportunity to put accessible design at the heart of rethinking local high streets and neighbourhoods.

- Work spaces: many people will still be travelling across the city to work and therefore bypass their local high street. For those with laptop-jobs that are being asked to work from home, creating local spaces that can be used for co-working without needing to pay a large monthly membership fee or spend lots of money on drinks in a cafe could be a greta way to enable people to spend more time in their local area.

Thank you!

Sounds great.

A few suggestions:

1. Safety and security for bikes, shoppers and families. Leaving in Seven Sisters, I wouldn't confidently leave my bike locked outside the shop. Some shops are clearly a front for some shady activities, others look like gangs headquarters with dozens of feral teens gathering outside and "owning" the pavement in front of them. 
In Italy, every high street has a couple of police passing by, knowing the area, its problems and acting as a deterrent against micro criminality. Of course we also need better social support for families in need, opportunities for young people etc in order to improve the social context etc but still, we should start with making our high streets safer places

2. stop criminalising e-scooters. It is about time we support e-transport in all its forms

I think it is a great mission, I'm particularly excited with the short term. I think it is long overdue that London becomes the cycling capital of the Western world. I think it has real opportunity to be the best city for cycling. However I would appreciate if the town planners responsible for designing the new cycle infrastructure to involve cycling bodies and consult cyclists on proposed new routes and ideas. 
There are 2 examples I use when cycling into work that are recently redeveloped, but obviously have been designed by people that don't cycle, namely:

1.  Elephant & Castle intersection - the precious roundabout was far easy to manage using the roads. Now that separated cycle paths have been created, cyclists have to compete with pedestrians that couldn't care about cyclists 

2.  Intersection at the Stockwell War Memorial - the straight cycle route needs to cross the turning left road. More often than not cars stop on the cycle path and make it impossible for cyclists to pass

My advice in summary would be to include cycle routes to follow the lines of the road and be more integrated with the roads. Cycle paths shared with pedestrians are awful to use and I would often default to using the road instead. 
 

Good luck with the projects, I look forward to improved road conditions and cycling infrastructure. 
 

kind regards

Chris

Just a quick thought from someone moving to Central London with my family with 3 kids as I was assigned to London for work...I am encouraged to see this idea developing and having lived in an Italian city, as well as an American small town (I know both very different from London, but allowed me to live in 2 ends of the spectrum), my family found so much more quality of life in the Italian city.  One of the reasons we felt, was that it was much more cycle friendly and had many smaller shops throughout, where we could get our groceries, clothes shop, and many other things within a 5-10 minute walk.  Even in a smaller American town where we prioritize the car over anything else, our trips take much longer and we are much less active and I would argue have a much lower quality of life, though our availability of bigger shops is more prevalent.  More of a simple outsiders perspective, but I am looking forward to being in London and learning more.  Good to read all the perspectives out there : )

Sorry but my nearest high at has no appeal for me whatsoever so I won't be going there by cycle.  Realistically I will drive across London to a more appealing one.   I would go by train but I can't park near my station. 

Our local High St looks like it was created by a committee and an accountant.

Making transport prohibitively expensive isn't a transport policy. 

More out of town parking and cheap quick electric public transport please.  Not more buses - too slow and cumbersome.  

These are great ideas but are you certain you aren't shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted?

The high street has been overtaken by online shopping - it just didn't see it coming in time & now it's paying the price. 

Coronavirus/Covid-19 has compounded that trend with hundreds of offices which will never go back to full capacity because of people working from home with all the consequences that has for sandwich shops, coffee shops etc which are located in town & city centres.

Well, the answer is easy: Instead of approving fancy mega developments, compulsory purchase "strategic" spaces and install public PARKS with large WATER FEATURES.  By 2040, London (and the South-East) will be a desert, with water deficiencies.

A stop must be set to the "desert-isation" of London (already dirty, dry and overpopulated).