On 14th November 2019 David Rudlin – Principal at URBED – was awarded the 2019 ‘Fellowship in the Built Environment’ by the 1851 Royal Commission, to ask ‘what is the high street for, and what might the future high street be like?’.
image: Open Government Licence v3.0
Urbanism Environment Design (URBED) writes:
The Fellowship will be delivered through URBED+, our innovative partnership with Manchester School of Architecture to deliver research with real world impact. The team comprises David Rudlin Principal at URBED acting as principal researcher and lead author, supported by Dr Lucy Montague Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Architecture and Vicky Payne Senior Consultant at URBED.
The media is full of stories of woe when it comes to the high street. Online retailing, business rates and changing consumer habits have led to the loss of many household names and the decimation of high streets across the country. We are left with the impression that there is very little we can do. In our winning submission to the 1851 Commission we propose a narrative-based approach to exploring solutions to this crisis. Rather than create another good practice guide or policy handbook we will tell the stories of a hundred high streets. Through these narratives, both positive and negative, our aim is to understand what’s happening on the high street and explore how more optimistic stories might be written in the future.
This approach will be founded on an extensive literature review and supported by original spatial analysis, economic analysis (using GOAD data) interviews and site surveys. From this we will develop high street studies illustrated with drawings, maps and info graphics.
The fellowship will run for two years, and where possible we will share any interim outputs along the way via the project blog below.
