but in fact it's something I've been thinking about for some time, and few days ago hit on the idea of giving a thread this title. I have some reservations about it, because I'm going to use the word 'natural' in a sense which could be misinterpreted as 'free from artificial regulation', and so free-market fundamentalist, but that's not what I mean, and it's a risk I'm prepared to take.To make a high street flourish, you need to set up certain conditions, just like a gardener. If you want certain plants to grow, you set the soil to enable those plants to get established. High rents, lack of vision, lack of a real plan for what the high street should be added with average footfall and lack of free units = sub letting, struggling businesses etc.
The starting point for this line of thought was my post from last year, Nimbyism Explained?, which included this quote from a 1960s House of Lords debate
That's what I mean by 'natural planning', and if anyone looks through title documents downloadable from the Land Registry today, they will be able to find the evidence of - still existing - quoted property companies having had a role in the original development of Sydenham Road, over 100 years ago now. They may not have had to worry about Town & Country planning Acts, but planned it certainly was. As such, it justifies some sort of planning, and for me, the ideal would be to get the benefits of such natural planning, driven by a long term vision, but with the dividends taxed rather more than they would have been in 1900. Rather than be constrained by now artificial planning use classes such as A1, A2, B1, C1 etc., flexible decisions could be taken to pencil in a café for the corner site, rather than let it go for a funeral parlour, pubs with declining economics could be easily converted to some other use. In fact, all that Lee and I could possibly want for SydenhamIt was under this system that the eighteenth century saw the development of what are now regarded as some of the more elegant parts of our towns—the Cadogan and Grosvenor Estate, Bloomsbury and so on. The merit of the system was that the landlord could ensure control of what was built on the land and of the upkeep of the estate once it was built. He did this by means of the leasehold covenants. Before the days of Town and Country Planning Acts, the leasehold system was, in effect, the only means of securing well-planned and well-maintained urban development, and of securing that estates could be redeveloped in an orderly fashion as the buildings fell into decay.
Joking aside, the shopowner sounded very enthusiastic about this particular businessman/woman's ideas and development for the area as the whole and sounds very much like something that would be very much welcomed in kirkdale/sydenham.