Brand Avenue

The Perfect High Street

An entertaining video produced by Monocle envisions the "Perfect High Street," wherein the world's most delightfully upscale and idiosyncratic retailers populate the main drag of the imagination, in an "Instant City" kind of way. Watch.

I had originally thought the video would be about architecture, but instead its focus is economic. (I can't afford a subscription, and therefore cannot read the accompanying article.) The street is characterized by a long succession of retailers you've never heard of. Necessities like groceries, banking, and a pharmacy--the experiences of which are normally rote and forgettable--are supplanted by stores plucked from locales as disparate as Japan and Switzerland that meet needs while also sating the senses.

The mix of tailors, bakers, fashionmongers, and cafes presents a complex declaration of globalized taste and local concern, at once representing the best of the global economy while expressive of our placemaking desires. This high street could in fact be almost anywhere, but the juxtaposition of these experiences, and the unfettered access we have to them, are uniquely ours; the notion of having all these moments strung together is completely predicated on the idea that they are not universally available.

Imagine the experience of walking down Monocle's street: We savor the "textured" milk of our flat white Australian coffee while waiting for our bespoke suits. Afterwards we pick up free samples of pricey skin moisturizer at the pharmacy to "dab on our wrists," and hop on our bikes, Swedish baguettes in tow, for the ride home.

Mind you, I am not scoffing: I think this all sounds quite civilized. We all know streets that resemble this in one form or another, and retailers we feel some sense of connection with, that we'd want to see in our neighborhoods. Many of the neighborhoods this blog lists to the right exhibit some version of the vitality the video is after.

So, what would your "perfect high street" entail? Mine might be something like Exmouth Market or Kensington Market, provided there's a good deli, an Italian coffee place, a sushi joint, a movie theater, a Wawa, a beer garden, a park, a bookstore, and a subway stop--which all probably says as much about my personal tastes as the Monocle video does about the authors'. Meanwhile, yours inevitably would be something else. Which is all fine, but I think we need to ask ourselves what the goal of this dreaming really is: Local economic health? "Better" consumer goods? A more cosmopolitan citizenry? Profit? Fantasy?

Below: Exmouth Market, London, via Flickr.

What about the design dimension of these stores, sidewalks, street edges? In a sense the presentation is more an endorsement of certain business models than any kind of urban form, and of the kinds of novelties that resonate with customers and that create competitive advantage for retailers. Stores that sell familiar labels, yes; but big retail names themselves, no. Why the "perfect high street" as defined in the article can't happen in a mall setting is left unexplained.

Furthermore, where are the offices on this street that employ the people to shop at these places? Can the stores' employees afford to live nearby? Can we? What kind of housing is there? How does this place connect to the rest of the city, metro area, or region? Where are the public services (libraries, schools, parks, etc)? Is there a farmer's market? Are street vendors legal in this town? What about the big-box stores on the edge of everywhere--are they rendered obsolete in such a scenario?

Below: Kensington Market, Toronto, via Flickr.

In other words, to me the "perfect high street" as envisioned is not so much unrealistic as incomplete. Precious, but a bit silly. Exciting, but not perfect. Provocative.

The video's slant reminded me of something Mayor Michael Bloomberg said about New York a few years ago:

''If New York City is a business, it isn't Wal-Mart -- it isn't trying to be the lowest-priced product in the market,'' a draft of the speech reads. ''It's a high-end product, maybe even a luxury product. New York offers tremendous value, but only for those companies able to capitalize on it.'' 

(Somewhat related: an urban design take on Whole Foods.)

Today's Notes

With so much worth mentioning and so little time to do so, a few quick links for your browsing pleasure...

- In a manner reminiscent of Second Life, real and virtual worlds will soon collide in the Dutch planned city of Almere:

You, the ‘ordinary’ individual! Now log onto the municipality’s digital plot-shop, pick yourself a piece of land and realize the house of your dreams. Welcome to 21st century city generation in Almere, the ‘adolescent’ new town of the Netherlands. Urban developers, large-scale construction firms and housing corporations are pushed off the stage and finally now you are given the chance to become the producer of your city. Your local government wants you to be proactive, creative and engaged!

This is not just a bunch of housing projects attached to a new town but the largest housing production endeavor of the coming decades in the Netherlands. 60.000 new homes are envisioned to be built by 2030, one-third (20.000) of which is to be customized by their owners. Driven by the motto ‘Ik bouw mijn huis in Almere/ I build my house in Almere’, this city would be created not only for people but by them. This strategy is expected to deliver a more complex, unpredictable, and spontaneous city than the carefully engineered and controlled one of the present.

(You'll need to leren some Nederlands in order to pick your future homesite).

- I recently read a fascinating history of the design moves behind the Tennessee Valley Authority--the most massive regional development effort in American history, by the way--and wrote a review that may be of interest. Not here, but Where. (thanks, Brendan)

- More than money is at stake in the sale of the most expensive condo ever built in Vancouver (thanks, Lisa):

So what's so unsettling about 1000 Beach Avenue, other than the churlish fact that the rest of us can't afford it? In part, it's because it defies the British Columbia ethos of woodsy naturalness. It rubs our noses in the fact the cedar, hemlock and fir have been pretty much used up, or at least are no longer cheap and plentiful regional materials; and that our new core culture is swiftly evolving into the kind of slick cosmopolitana for which 1000 Beach Avenue serves as such a heady backdrop. Like the old west-coast-modern approach, it boasts views that have been strategically designed to look out onto the landscape -- but in this case, the most vaunted views are the towers to the north and, to the south, the condo's own boat slip in the marina below (admired from the bathroom window "as you're brushing your teeth," notes Arbel).

Arbel's argument is that we have to rethink the concept of "local" in our architecture. Why is concrete now the definitive West Coast material? Because years ago, as our wood supply dwindled and post-and-beam structures started to rot, designers and builders turned to concrete as a logical, sustainable substitute, training a generation of designers and builders in its use. Within a decade or two, the industry boasted an entire citywide crew of concrete artisans. So, it's the particular skill, rather than the material itself, which is local.

(A related 2006 article in Canadian Architect points toward the emergence of "architizing," wondering aloud whether modern architecture is nothing more than, as the article mentioned above puts it, a "lap dance for itinerant billionaires." An interesting read; Philip Johnson would argue that this is not new.)

- Just as economics gone amok play such a part in the creation of sense of place, personal and collective identity, so does the vestige of British colonialism, as a highly entertaining 2001 Salon article points out.

Despite the snarling anthems of the Sex Pistols, the stark social realism of contemporary filmmakers like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh and literature from D.H. Lawrence to Hanif Kureishi -- despite all this and the Spice Girls, Americans still associate status, wealth and propriety with all that is English. Anglophilia runs deep in American culture, but it's been particularly useful in helping Americans lay out a fantasy for how they want to live, a measure of wealth and success that's guided urban planners for a century. But as companies like Toll Brothers and Pulte Homes consolidate the business of suburb building -- much the same way McDonald's consolidates the business of hamburger making -- Anglophilia has graduated from cultural tradition to powerful branding tool.

- Speaking of England, the section of south London known as Croydon, long regarded as one of its most visually offensive, sets out to make itself into a Northern Barcelona:

It is a place that gives concrete jungles a bad name, an urban nightmare famed for its tram system and some of the ugliest architecture outside the old Soviet bloc. Now Croydon wants to turn itself into Barcelona, one of the coolest cities on the planet. The much-reviled town - whose one fragile connection with glamour is that it was the birthplace of Kate Moss - was today announcing a multi-billion pound regeneration plan that will include pod-shaped buildings on stilts.

London's "third city," below.

And lastly, after some dreaming of Australia, I stumbled across a beautiful photostream of the Brisbane skyline. Lesser known than that of Sydney, of course; but well worth a gander.