Why not find out first, spend second?
This is the wrong way around we fear:
The UK government has pledged £210m to regenerate high streets by taking boarded-up shops, pubs and clubs and turning them into shared workspaces, cafes and community hubs.
Andy Burnham said the funds would “help put power back into the hands of locals who know their area best” as part of his effort to “restore pride and bring hope back”.
Spending to paint a few bollards, hang a few baskets, isn’t the right way to do this.
We know that we desire less High Street than we used to. That online sales are now 25% or so of total retail sales proves this to us - we require 25% less High St on a simple calculation. OK, so the next thing is what do we desire more of instead? That could be community hubs, certainly. Might be more or better pubs. It could also be more housing. Or simply to retain those howling wastelands of formerly commercial areas as tourist traps. Who knows?
The thing being that we’ve a method of finding out. All sorts of people have ideas, they try them out, then everyone does more of what works and less of what doesn’t. That is, we’re gasping for rather more of that free market experimentation. Because we don’t actually know. Some economic resources - land, buildings and so on - are now surplus to their original requirements. What gets done with them next is unknown. Thus we must have the experiments to see what uses meet with human desires.
So the requirement is freedom to change use. Easily, cheaply and without the bureaucracy planning it for us - nor spending on denying us the chance to experiment.
Once we have worked out what to do of course then there’s a place for bolstering that new use. Except, of course, once we’ve found out the new use that works it won’t need bolstering, will it?
In that economic jargon this is the difference between risk and uncertainty. We really are just uncertain - we dunno - what use most second and third rank local High Sts should be put to. We need to find out before spending and once we’ve found out we’ll not need the spending because it’ll happen anyway.
Tim Worstall