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dere-street.com
a variety of things, some useful. |
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dere-street.com
a variety of things, some useful. |
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Conceptualising the relationship between change and the urban (and the street in particular), is problematic, particularly attempting to theorise the links between theoretical conceptions of the street and the actual detail of local change. Meta-narratives of change have been shown to not only be theoretically suspect, but have been even more strongly questioned by changes ‘on the ground’ which challenge the applicability of many of the modernist visions of change. In particular, the considerable evidence for a highly stable urban street explored in Chapter 6 highlights the fallacy of cities as places of constant change.
Other aspects of the modernist caricature fare better. The material on the automobile explored in Chapter 5 clearly shows that debates around the role of the automobile continue to carry great relevance to Edinburgh today: visions of the "efficient city", one structured around the rational distribution of services and resources and fundamentally shaped by influence of the automobile (exemplified by the conflict between Princes Street’s twin roles as a traffic corridor and a pedestrian centre of leisure and consumption) remain fundamental to debates about the nature, role and future of the local street.
Visions of the Modern City as one which annihilates its predecessors are clearly exaggerations: the evidence here (particularly through the role of listed buildings) questions the universality of such discourses, although this result may reflect the particular choices of study regions. Visions of the corporate city, which dominate American readings of the city (e.g. Davis, 1992) are revealed as unrepresentative of the European experience: it is arguable that, while these visions may describe the ‘modern’ North American mega-city (Los Angeles, Houston, and arguably Toronto and Montreal), it is very doubtful if they apply to smaller cities world-wide (particularly in Europe), or even to Manhattan itself.
Postmodern visions of the changing urban experience provide many fruitful ideas for analysis, although the lack of a clear over-arching model or narrative has made it difficult to discern particular ‘universal’ postmodern traits. The focus on organised leisure and spectacle of much of the literature (particularly that focusing on the mall and the ‘Fantasy City’, e.g. Shields, 1989; Hannigan, 1998) forms a sharp contrast against other postmodern calls for emphases upon the ‘mundane’, the common/everyday place(s) of experience (Hayden, 1995; Morris, 1988). It is important to attempt to situate the street as a central component of the urban experience, be it modern, postmodern, or some combination of the two.
It is more problematic to attempt to link the results of the thesis to many of the prevailing conceptions of consumption, given the thesis’ focus on change on the ground, rather than on the perceptions of users of the street as a site of consumption. It is clear from the material that while depictions of the global, corporate street articulated by some consumption analyses (Jones, 1991; Crawford, 1992) are considerably overstated and grossly unrepresentative of the study areas as a whole, it is also clear that in particular parts of the city (along the central portion of Princes Street in this case), these analyses have considerable local applicability.
The wider issues of the ‘consumption as euphemism for lifestyle’ debates (Campbell, 1995: p. 117; McRobbie, 1997: p. 75) are harder to address, as many of these arguments are rather divorced from the reality of consumption as an exchange process, one that is necessarily articulated through physical (or increasingly cyber-) space. The methods used here are unable to throw light upon such prevailing conceptions of ‘consumption’, as the thesis takes such a contrary view of the whole consumption debate itself. The thesis re-emphasises the role of place and of the environment within the process of consumption itself, emphasising the position of urban space as a fundamental and constituent part of the exchange process itself (rather than as part of the advertising process, e.g. Sack, 1992). This is in sharp contrast to many of the more esoteric consumption debates, which marginalise the roles of space and the environment, despite their centrality both to the planning of cities, and to the progressive re-imagining of urban environments which is characteristic of so much of the ‘postmodern’ revitalisation and urban redevelopment.
It is clear that the street and its analysis is central to the development of urban ‘spatial narratives’ (Zukin, 1992; Meethan, 1996) that recognise that spaces have their own particular histories (Morris, 1988). Unfortunately, in much of the recent literature the ‘mundane’ street has been largely relegated to a site of ‘unknown’ change, despite its central position within urban consumption. The thesis argues that the street should be viewed as a stage, with consumers performing as actors upon (and within) the stage set. The street, its sets and its staging, is not a fixed entity, but a fluid environment which is continuously changing and evolving at the local level. The study of the street is the study of the geography of consumption at its most urban and fundamental.
The street is a site of continuous change, one that is constantly being redefined. From the arcade to the department store, to the mall to the festival market place, the history of urban development has paralleled the development of new street forms. Geographers’ interests have echoed these shifts, leaving the ‘ordinary’ street under-theorised and under-studied (Crewe and Lowe, 1995). The remainder of this chapter summarises the data, methods and the results that have been previously presented, and contextualises these theoretical narratives of the changing city (and of change itself) within an analysis at the local scale. These results emphasise the importance of analysing change at local scales, finding considerable support for Massey’s (1994: p. 127) arguments about the specificities of change and the difficulties of extrapolating wider trends onto local landscapes.
The results of this study indicate that the Goad material provides a good source of data on urban change, subject to certain caveats. Comparisons within the 34 source maps indicates a high degree of consistency within the datasets, and no inaccurate occupant data was identified. There is however a case for some form of alternative field survey to provide a more explicit examination/verification of the accuracy of Goad’s data collection. Practise showed that with the development of precisely tailored software it is possible to transcribe the data in these types of maps quickly and accurately: it is difficult, however, to see how this data could be accurately transcribed without the use of a GIS system. The only significant issue that arose while using the maps was that of the poor reproduction of the older maps, where Goad supplied poor copies, rather than originals: this experience indicates that while the use of Goad maps is relatively unproblematic, the acquisition of usable source copies may be more of a problem, and users may need to supplement the material provided by Goad with access to original copies of the maps. Hindsight shows that it would have been better to purchase a licence to copy the material from Goad, and then arrange for higher quality copies to be made from originals held by the National Library of Scotland.
The compilation of the Goad data itself introduces issues which should not be ignored when using the material. There is considerable evidence to indicate that many of Goad’s site uses are overly specific and represent the biases of the surveyors, rather than representing self-reported definitions of occupant uses. This is most evident with the distinctions Goad makes between the numerous types of clothing retailers: in these cases it is arguably better to use a broader more encompassing definitions of uses than Goad’s, which infer a level of detail which is not necessarily accurate or appropriate. The second flaw within Goad’s data is the practice of ascribing a single all-encompassing use to each site. There are a number of sites within the study Regions, especially along Princes Street, which clearly contain multiple site uses: this simplification becomes very clear if Goad’s data is compared with the local tax records which clearly indicate multiple uses and subdivisions.
Goad’s data also gives a slightly false picture of the uses of the street (in the broadest sense) by the inconsistent treatment of above and below street uses, and especially with the identification of all above street uses (be they retail, residential etc.) simply as ‘Entrance’. This, when combined with Goad’s choices of study areas (which focuses primarily on recognised retail areas and their environs) means that the picture the Goad data provides for the provision of services in the areas may be a considerable under-estimation of the actual numbers of services (etc.) in these neighbourhoods. Goad’s material is also unsuitable as a source to study questions like ‘evening leisure’, which are better served by field surveys, as Goad’s rather generic data does not provide information like opening hours. Given that Goad’s material is invariably geographically constrained, the data is of limited use as a basis for the study of the expansion of retailing (etc.), as many areas of considerable interest (including the Grassmarket and Victoria Street in the St. Giles study Region) are not covered by the surveys.
With the more recent Goad maps being based upon computerised site and building data provided by the Ordnance Survey, it can be expected that the accuracy of the collected data will increase, and that it will be much easier to identify cases of site redevelopment and boundary changes from changes in the Goad material.
Two substantive methodological issues arose during the analysis of the collected Goad data. The first, and arguably the most irritating and repeatedly problematic issue, was that of flexibility (or lack thereof) of the broad classification systems that were used to subdivide sites into the broad groupings of similar uses (retailing, leisure etc.). In theory, dividing the site uses in the two study Regions into five broad use categories (retail, leisure, services, institutional, and other) was an obvious and straightforward first step towards generating a profile of the makeup of the street, and analysing how/if this was changing.
In practice, attempts to assign sites within each of the fixed categories of the Broad Use Classification (BUC) proved to be problematic and excessively inflexible. As the uses of many sites arguably spanned two if not three of these uses, it is clear that a more flexible set of definitions, perhaps based upon these five categories but allowing complementary intermediate groupings (e.g. retail/leisure, leisure/services etc.) would have been more appropriate. Tweaking the classifications of site uses cannot however overcome the fundamental methodological problem inherent within subjective forms of site classification: a substantial component of this quantitative process is invariably predicated upon a collation of repeated qualitative judgements about the nature and role of particular site uses. By expanding the classification options within the Broad Use Classification and allowing for a more nuanced and flexible assessment of the numerous site uses that fell between the main classification categories, the subjectivity of site classification that eventually required the supplementary classification of sites into additional category specific groupings (i.e. leisure sites, service sites) would have been more appropriately addressed.
With the aggregation of use data came the realisation that the many flavours of ‘vacancies’ in the street represented one of the dominant, if not the dominant, site uses across both Regions. This should have been recognised by the addition of a ‘vacant’ category to the five part BUC classification discussed above: this would have made it far easier to isolate the role of vacancies in urban change, especially when attempting to track changing site uses across the broader use categories.
The second significant methodological issue which arose was the handling of the expansion of the Princes Street data set as a result of the expansion of Goad’s survey area. While it was initially felt that the addition of these extra sites would not have a significant impact upon patterns within the dataset, it became clear during the analysis that this expansion made it more difficult to track many types of change over the length of the study period, as analyses of the Princes Street data invariably showed substantial changes in 1984 which had a knock-on effect throughout the following decade’s data. While it was relatively straightforward to eliminate the impact of some of this change by excluding the data for Area 4 (only data from the Waverly Centre), the remainder of the additional sites were included within two pre-existing Areas (Areas 5 and 6). This meant that the exclusion of this data was not a straightforward process, and indicates that assigning all of the new sites to new Areas, rather than to pre-existing ones, would have been a better decision, as it would have allowed the exclusion of these new Areas to allow a more straightforward analysis of change in the remaining Areas within the Region. While corrections could theoretically be applied to some data, it was not possible to apply any form of correction to the data that was calculated for multiples within the study Region. This highlights the considerable difficulty in attempting to retrospectively re-classify data, especially after beginning any analysis, and points towards the advantages of using relatively complex relational database systems to store data.
Visions of the city as a constantly changing annihilator of history (and by inference, authenticity) are questioned by the results of analyses of change and stability. Berman (1982) views the modern experience as the site (or experience) of the tensions between the forces of change and those of stability, a tension which results in a modern city that is "chronically unstable"(Oakes, 1997: p. 527). It is clear from the data that analyses that portray the urban street as constantly changing are correct, although the actual rate of overall site change is relatively low, approximately 15% per year. There is no evidence of increases in the overall rates of change over the length of the study period in either Region, as has been suggested as a characteristic of the transition from modern to post-modern landscapes. The variations within the annual rates of change contained within the data have been correlated with periods of substantial site redevelopment, rather with wider patterns of occupant change per se, which reinforces the perception of relatively stable rates of change within the two study Regions.
Data describing the relatively low overall rates of change do however hide several aspects of change which arguably act to exaggerate perceptions of how quickly the city is changing. Perhaps most visible is the significant role vacant sites play in the street: in the St. Giles Region vacancies were the largest (numerical) site use over the study period, and one of the largest uses in the Princes Street Region. While the data indicates that the majority of site change does not involve a transition through a vacant site, significant numbers do, and it is clear that these relatively high levels of vacancies may act to emphasise the dynamic nature of the street. Another factor which may serve to emphasise the perceptions of change is the strong association revealed by the data which reveals that site changes are often marked by a fundamental difference between the types of uses of old and new occupants.
When evaluating change however, the data indicates just how vital it is to simultaneously consider the persistence of the street: the cumulative impact of change is a fundamental characteristic of change itself. There are aspects of the street that can be argued to be ‘chronically unstable’, but the data indicates that rather than describing large amounts or sites of fluctuation, this actually more
accurately characterises a small number of sites which are the focus of repeated change (cf. Map 7.1, and Chapter 7.27: The Constantly Changing Street), and which represent a disproportionate amount of the total change. These sites may help sustain a perception of rapid rates of change, even if these high levels of change are not reflective of the wider patterns of change.
While there is a certain amount of geographic concentration of these sites, this clustering often corresponds to neighbourhoods undergoing significant revitalisation/reconstruction. In contrast to these sites of high change, there are significant numbers of sites which show little, if any change over the duration of the study period: 60% of all sites in both Regions had either one or two occupants, with all sites averaging just 2.5 occupants over the seventeen year study period. This vividly highlights the flaws inherent in focusing solely upon change itself, rather than upon the more nuanced and cumulative impact of successive changes and the significant role of persistent sites whose stability and presence is often ignored by the literature. To focus on space solely as a "dynamic medium" (Zukin, 1992: p. 224) may miss the underlying taken for granted stability of the urban reality.
Understanding these dynamics of transition and stability is critical if we are to develop the grounding necessary to question the local impact of analyses of urban transition. It has been widely argued that we are in the middle of a fundamental "transformation of landscape" (Zukin, 1992: p. 223): while this may be true of gentrifying areas in the United States, the Edinburgh evidence questions the applicability of this rhetoric of change, given the continued persistence of older (‘vernacular’) landscapes throughout the length of the study, the slow overall rates of landscape evolution, and the significant investments in preserving existing streetscapes which indicate a ‘reinforcement’ of landscape, rather than transition.
This persistence of existing forms leads us to question Harvey’s (1989a) conception of the ‘ephemeral’ postmodern city, which closely parallels Jameson’s (1984: p. 69) arguments about the "disappearance of a sense of history" (Cooke, 1990: p. 111) . Arguably, there is a bias in the literature towards the assumption that many occupants, in particular chains and multiples, have a somewhat ‘un-historic’ position in the landscape (Luxenberg, 1986), despite the strong historic roots of many chains in the landscape (Mort and Thompson, 1994).
While ‘historic’ readings of the landscape have been shown to be highly subjective (see Hayden, 1995; Francaviglia, 1996), and the landscape itself subject to considerable manipulation through Facadism and urban redevelopment (Richards, 1994), the data indicates that the Edinburgh streetscape contains considerable historic attributes, both in terms of the physical street fabric on one hand, and in highly persistent occupants and uses on the other, with over 20% of 1994 sites not showing any change during the study period, and over a third of all sites being over 10 years old.
Over a third of all 1994 sites by contrast are less than 5 years old: this reinforces the belief that the street should be seen as constantly in flux, and exhibiting considerable simultaneous amounts of change and stability. It is clear that the street should not be regarded as either changing or stable, but rather a nuanced combination of the two: the street is still defined by "the presence of the past in a present that supersedes it but still lays claim to it" (Augé, 1995: p. 75).
The results reveal the necessity to conceptualise the street as a modernist phenomenon, one that displays both stability and change in constant tension. It is clear that the more monolithic conceptions of change somewhat exaggerate the amount and role of change within the landscape, and that the vision of an ever more rapidly changing landscape is by this evidence revealed to be more perceptual than evidenced by change on the ground. The concept of change is revealed to be highly fractured, representing the summation of numerous processes operating at different time-scales: in overall terms, change is slow and steady, while exhibiting considerable amounts of very local concentration. Perception plays an important role in understanding analyses of the street, and it is clear that while there are a number of factors which give the impression of significant amounts of repeated change in the landscape, they are counterbalanced by significant amounts of stability and of slower and more gradual urban evolution.
Most importantly, this work reinforces the importance of studying the street: it emphasises that the street is not a stable phenomenon, and that it is a site of change that reflects the wider changes within society. It also emphasises the need to move beyond concepts of landscape that infer this stability, and highlights the continual evolution of the street, even within relatively fixed and stable physical/architectural frameworks.
Wither postmodernism? The role and validity of postmodern discourses is highly dependant upon analyses of change and the urban. It is clear from the evidence that conceptions of the postmodern city must in reality be heavily embedded within those of the modern city itself: reflecting not only the slow rate of overall urban change but the high levels of stability and persistence within the urban street itself. While the data does indicate significant changes over the length of the study period, these represent the accumulation of years of slow change, rather than seismic shifts from one urban form to another. This reinforces the belief that not all change can be conceptualised as happening solely within the modern/postmodern rubric: the postmodern transition is not the only source of change, nor is it the only motive for change within the landscape, as such perspectives minimise in particular the wider changes in social perspectives and government urban policy that also have significant impacts upon the study Regions.
It is clear from the analyses of the planning materials for the study Regions that it is the planning process, and substantial investments by Local and Regional governments, that have been most significant in changing the nature of the street. The wider assumptions of the role of capital and consumption in (re)shaping the landscape must be contextualised within a local framework that takes account of these alternative structural changes. While the nature of the street is profoundly shaped by its occupants, to focus solely upon them, and their role in consumption processes, marginalises the considerable impact of governmental bodies (such as the Council, the relevant conservation and development bodies, and the Scottish Office) who are not only intent on reshaping the street in particular ways but who have both the capital and the political means to translate their visions into changes on the ground.
References to homogeneity and globalisation, placelessness, and cities as sites of multinational capital (or alternatively as ‘non-places’) abound within the geographic (and wider) literature (de Certeau, 1984; Jameson, 1984; Zukin, 1992; Stallabrass, 1996). Many of these discourses are however somewhat vague, especially if we wish to use them as a framework to interrogate the local experience of change, as they tend to refer to generally accepted conceptualisations, and as such avoid detailed (practical) exposition. The net result of this is that when we wish to analyse homogeneity (etc.) in the street, it becomes necessary to expand upon exactly what homogeneity means.
We have seen three somewhat different definitions of homogeneity used so far in this analysis: increasing homogeneity defined as a decline in the overall number of site uses, as changes within particular sites uses, and perhaps most conventionally as a shorthand for (or an indicator of) the penetration of chains and multiples into the urban landscape. Even these multiple definitions do not cover all possible aspects of homogeneity: it can also be defined in terms of the sale of branded goods within (all) stores, or in terms of the increasing proliferation of corporate signs and symbolism in the landscape.
If we use the number of uses in the Region as a potential indicator of homogeneity, the data indicates that if we use Goad’s very specific site uses as a basis for comparison the overall numbers of unique uses in the St. Giles Region shows some fluctuations but remained relatively constant, while the Princes Street data shows an increase in unique uses of over 30%. If we use more generic definitions of site uses, the data shows no change whatsoever in the number of uses over the study period.
Breaking these Regional numbers down into the smaller geographic Areas, it becomes clear that there are sizeable variations between the numbers of different uses in different areas within each Region: however it is also clear that these differences appear to be stable. This indicates that there are (and have been) noticeable variations in numbers of uses at small ‘neighbourhood’ scales, but that there is no evidence of any transition towards homogeneity within the data. Similarly, analyses of the dominant site uses at the Regional scale indicates that while there are changes in the numbers of particular uses, there is very little evidence of the consolidation of uses.
Analyses of the impacts of chains are however more revealing, both for what the data tells us about changing levels of homogeneity and about the essential applicability and specificity of much of the related commentary. Comparisons of the penetration of chains in each of the study Regions reveals substantial differences between them, even though they are separated by less than a kilometre. In the Princes Street Region, the percentage of all sites which were chains grew from over 35% in 1978 to almost 45% by 1994: in the St. Giles Region the numbers of chains remained constant, at approximately 15%. This difference is in itself significant, as it highlights just how geographically bounded much of the discourse on chains is ‘on the ground’: the increasing dominance of chains is obviously not a universal phenomenon throughout the city, but a very geographically specific phenomenon, and as such somewhat unrepresentative of the wider urban street. Outside the traditional ‘high street’, the evidence of a widespread shift towards landscapes dominated by capital is weak: within the St. Giles Region, there was only one Area where chains represented more than 25% of all sites in 1994, while in contrast in the Princes Street Region there was only one Area where this was not true. While there are Areas in the St. Giles Region that show substantial increases in the numbers of chains during the study period, a third of the Areas show declines in the numbers of chain sites. Taken together, the data for chains within the St. Giles Region problematises much of the discourse surrounding the role of chains by highlighting and indeed emphasising the particular specificity (and indeed the simplicity) of these discourses.
Even though the number of chain sites in the Princes Street Region is much higher than in the St. Giles Region, it must be emphasised that (at least in 1994) they still represented less than 50% of the Region’s sites, and while this percentage was seen to steadily increase, the rate of overall increase was only 1/2% per year. The proportion of new occupants who are chains is considerably less than the overall proportion of chains in the street: highlighting the incremental nature of the Region’s transition. Similarly, in both Regions the clear majority of sites which closed were not chains, which may create a perception that chains are more persistent, even though the data questions this assumption.
Despite the considerable evidence questioning the wider applicability of homogenising discourses, there is also a great deal of evidence to support them, albeit in very limited areas within one Region. If we focus on retail sites, it is clear that in the Princes Street Region, and especially along Princes Street itself, that we are seeing the emergence of the much vaunted/feared global landscape, with chains occupying between half and three quarters of all retail sites by 1994. These Areas have also shown significant increases in the numbers of chains over the length of the study period, which emphasises that the ‘retail revolution’ of the 1980s (Dawson, 1988) has continued throughout the 90s.
Comparison of the Princes Street Region with the St. Giles Region reveals the marked disparities between the two Regions, with the Princes Street data showing a substantial concentration of chain sites unique within the two Regions (and the remainder of Edinburgh). While Crewe and Lowe have argued that "there is no imminent danger of a homogenous geography of advanced capitalism" (1995: p. 1880), these results do clearly show that at local scales these homogenous geographies have emerged, with Areas around Princes Street where there are few, if any, non-chain retailers. In addition, it is clear that in these Areas with very high proportions of chains the number of multiples within these chain sites is increasing as the overall numbers of chain sites rise, reinforcing perceptions of homogeneity. In contrast, the St. Giles Region shows very few examples of chain multiples, with the noticeable exception of banking and financial services.
Whether it is possible to link this homogenisation with discourses on the death of the ‘local’ and the growth of what Featherstone has described as ‘no-place space’ (1994: p. 392) is somewhat more problematic. While Princes Street itself may symbolise "the ‘malling’ of retail space" (Crewe, 1994: p. 23) the argument that this represents "interchangeable urban spaces divorced from local context" (Savage and Warde, 1993: p. 141) rests on ‘myths’ of authenticity, where "an alienating and monolithic capitalism" has subsumed ‘real’ or ‘local’ experience (Thrift, 1997: p. 141).
In some senses, the uniqueness and the visual dominance of the distinctive historical landscape into which Princes Street has been carved will arguably always ensure that the experience of flânerie, of funshopping, of the exchange function of consumption, will in this particular place always be a local, if mediated, experience. It must also be remembered that many of the Areas with the highest proportion of chains show some of the longest average site occupancies, and the lowest number of sites with large numbers of occupants: while dominated by chains, these Areas are arguably also marked by high levels of occupant stability, and often act as fixed (and often historic in and of themselves) landmarks within the street.
The evidence of this research points to the need to ground research in the reality of change and restructuring, rather than its accompanying rhetoric. We must make strong distinctions between the economic geography of the mall, which seeks and is highly dominated by corporate capital, and the reality of the city streets which display different dynamics and processes.
This research has emphasised the need to study the particularly local geographies of the street, which so many have recognised as understudied and under theorised (Crewe and Lowe, 1995; Jackson and Thrift, 1995), and which, as Massey (1994) has recognised, give us an ideal opportunity to study change ‘on the ground’, and to theorise from changes at the local level. While globalisation is visible within the landscapes of the study Regions, but the putative landscapes of global capital are not dominant, as they exist only along Princes Street itself. This is yet another example of the weakness of totalising discourses, and reflects the considerable distinctions between the globalisation visible in the mall, and that visible in particular streets. Assumptions of globalisation may reflect the dominance of discourses highly influenced by the North/American experience, while the Edinburgh street reveals considerable differences between the rhetoric of sameness and the complexity of reality.
The impact of the Retail revolution is made clear through this data. It is clear that the transition towards a high street dominated by chains and multiples did not taper off during the 80s but continued into the early 90s, leading to the current situation where chains and multiples occupy all but a few sites in the prime Princes Street Areas. The data does indicate however just how geographically concentrated this transition actually is: the Princes Street concentration is completely unrepresentative of the study site in its entirety. This material thus problematises the concept of the ‘high street’, which by this evidence differs substantially from the surrounding retail landscape, revealing the fundamental metaphor to be highly specific, rather than a general description of the urban condition, and as such potentially questionable as a shorthand to describe the condition of the retail street.
If we use an alternative definition of homogeneity that emphasises the similarity between areas by identifying tenants who occupy multiple sites simultaneously throughout both Regions, somewhat different patterns of similarity emerge. As was the case with chains, it is clear that there are substantially more multiples in the Princes Street Region than there are in the St. Giles Region, although the differences are not as marked, with there being significantly fewer multiples in the Princes Street Region than there are chains, while the numbers of chains and multiples in the St. Giles Region are roughly similar. The distributions and patterns of change in the numbers of multiples are significantly different between the two Regions: the data shows a considerable decline in the numbers of multiples in the St. Giles Region during most of the study period, while the numbers in the Princes Street Region remained broadly static. There are no significant concentrations of multiples in the St. Giles Region, with only two Areas (out of sixteen) with more than 25% multiples: in contrast, only two Areas in the Princes Street Region had less than 25% multiples, with most Areas having multiples in somewhere between a quarter and a third of their sites, with the highest concentrations along Princes Street itself, where there is a high correlation between chains and multiples. Given the relatively small sample size of the two Regions, these high levels of multiples is somewhat surprising, but this emphasises just how many occupants/firms are repeated within the local (and especially Princes Street) landscape, and that considerable levels of homogeneity (or perhaps more accurately sameness) exist at these very local levels. How can we conceive of ‘local uniqueness’ (Crewe and Lowe, 1995: p. 1879) when Areas exhibit such local homogeneity?
Such questions invariably beg the question of what is ‘local’ in all of these analyses. Are we looking for indicators of local ownership, local employment, local control? Is it not possible for sites to be ‘local’ but simultaneously ‘national’ or even international? If we assume that all non-chain sites are ‘local’, then removing chain sites from the multiple data leaves us with what are effectively ‘local’ multiples, which give us a rather different perspective on the transition of the Edinburgh street. While it was earlier indicated that the numbers of multiples declined markedly in the St. Giles Region during the study period, breaking down multiples into chain and non-chain multiples indicates that in fact the number of chain-multiples has remained static, with the number of local multiples collapsing, declining by almost 80% between 1978 and the end of 1987, before beginning a slow recovery in the early 90s. This change coincides with the closure of a number of department stores within the St. Giles study Region, and the opening of competing shopping centres immediately to the south of the Region. The data for the Princes Street Region shows a different pattern of change, with numbers of local multiples broadly constant before beginning a sudden decline in the early 90s.
These very particular patterns of change identified by the changes in numbers of these local multiples indicates that changes in the distribution of ‘local multiples’ may act as a very useful indicator of the relative health of the local economy: of all the means used to analyse the data, this was the only one which provided any specific insight into the particularly local nature of the restructuring process, rather than emphasising the penetration of national/supra-national capital into the local landscape, as the use of chains as indicators of change invariably does. It must be recognised however that the utility of these sites as indicators of the state of the more local economy is highly dependent upon the size of the study area, with larger areas allowing for the identification of a larger number of sites, and providing a truer picture of local change.
The role of leisure, in all its various forms, together with leisure based activities, has become increasingly important, even if the precise nature of the dynamics and articulations underlying this change are subject to debate (Urry, 1990; Rojek, 1995; Hughes, 1999). Identifying this transition in the landscape is relatively straightforward, albeit with the realisation that significant types of leisure and festive activities (i.e. festivals, place marketing, and so on) cannot be ‘read’ from Goad’s landscapes. Thus they do not appear explicitly within the data, despite being some of the most significant factors shaping and reshaping the street and its environment.
The landscapes in question display considerable growth in the number of leisure related sites, with numbers slowly rising in the Princes Street Region, and rising more dramatically in the St. Giles Region. The number of leisure sites in the St. Giles Region has increased by almost 80% over the length of the study period, with consistent rates of growth averaging 5% every year. While we might have expected the St. Giles Region to contain high numbers of leisure sites at the start of the study period, as it contains the Royal Mile and a number of tourist services, in 1978 both Regions had broadly comparable numbers of leisure sites, with the relatively high concentrations of leisure sites along the Royal Mile counteracted by very low numbers of leisure sites in the remainder of the St. Giles Region.
Overall, there are three broad types of leisure change that are apparent within the dataset: the growth in the provision of leisure related goods and services (especially ‘sporting’ retailers and travel agents), the rise in tourism and leisure associated with the ‘tourist-historic city’, and the significant growth in numbers of pubs, restaurants and leisure facilities. Of the three, the latter is arguably the broadest and most prominent throughout the two study Regions. While the numbers of pubs in both study Regions has remained broadly static, the numbers of restaurants have risen considerably, by some 78% in the St. Giles Region and 28% in Princes Street. These levels of growth are however unremarkable when compared with the growth in numbers of takeaway food providers: they have increased by 388% in St. Giles and by over 1000% in the Princes Street Region. Together, the increased numbers of restaurants and convenience food providers represent almost 50% of the total increase in leisure sites in the St. Giles Region, and just under 80% in the Princes Street Region.
This data provides a considerable context for analyses of the growth (and definitions) of ‘leisure’, especially of attempts to make cities more ‘liveable’ (Landry, Bianchini et al., 1995; Hughes, 1999). While it indicates considerable success in the increased provision of a variety of leisure services, it particularly questions the conflation of leisure and tourism, as it is clear that the combination of pubs, restaurants and convenience food providers represent the dominant forms of leisure provision across the whole of the study Regions: in the St. Giles Region these sites represent over 50% of all leisure facilities in all but three Areas, two of which are along the Royal Mile and therefore have significant concentrations of tourist sites and associated facilities.
Zukin has argued at great length (1988; 1990; 1995) that the restructuring of urban spaces is related to the exploitation of what she has termed ‘real cultural capital’. Similarly, Harvey has focused on the re-emphasis of ‘symbolic capital’ inherent within the wider transitions characterised on the one hand by gentrification, and on the other by civic urban revitalisation strategies (1987; 1989a; 1989b). Analysis of the changes in leisure in the St. Giles Region, specifically around the Royal Mile/High Street strongly supports the links between change, development and the wider ‘heritage industry’ (Ashworth and Tunbridge, 1990), with the significant and increasing concentration of leisure sites in these Areas. Perhaps even more clear is the emergence of substantial concentrations of particular forms of leisure sites in these Areas: we have seen the emergence of noticeable concentrations of restaurants, pubs and convenience food providers in these Areas, to the point where these latter site uses represent over 20% of all uses in six Areas in 1994, compared to only one in 1978. In comparison, there were no Areas in all of the Princes Street Region with similar concentrations of both leisure in general and pubs and restaurants in particular. This may however be a result of difficulties such uses may have in competing for space in the Princes Street Region with the significant numbers of chains and multiples that dominate that Region. In comparison with the St. Giles Region, Princes Street clearly shows what we might describe as a ‘high-street’ leisure transition, with marked increases in numbers of very particular types of leisure uses in the street. We have seen the significant increases in numbers of convenience food providers and restaurants throughout both study Regions, and to this shift is added increases in the numbers of travel agents and shops selling ‘sports/outdoor’ clothing and related equipment. The latter uses represent over 25% of all the leisure sites in the Princes Street Region, and if we exclude pubs, restaurants and takeaways from the number of leisure uses this grows to 75% of the remaining leisure sites. By comparison, travel agents and sports stores represent only 20% of the corresponding leisure facilities in St. Giles, which also emphasises the much wider range of leisure uses and facilities that exist there.
The increasing importance of sites providing leisure-related services (as opposed to the leisure inherent in ‘funshopping’ - Jansen, 1989) as a component of the street is clear, although markedly different patterns of change can be clearly identified within the dataset. While there has been much debate about the ‘Disneyfication’ of the city, it is clear that the experience of the street is different from that of the mall, the festival marketplace, or any other strongly bounded and centrally controlled leisure feature/attraction (Crawford, 1992). The leisure facilities of the ‘regular’ street are dominated by pubs, restaurants, takeaways and travel agents: arguably signs of the importance of mass produced leisure, but simultaneously and markedly different from the artfully produced leisure of the reviving city centre and its emphases on place marketing and cultural capitalism. Arguably, in this case a substantial difference between the Royal Mile and that of other revival centres, such as South Street Seaport in New York, or Fauneil Hall in Boston (Boyer, 1992), is that the area is still an integral part of a wider, functioning, city: it has not become a museum, or a sanitised attraction. The considerable concentration of institutional services and offices in the area, combined with significant numbers of local residents, helps preserve the Royal Mile as a seamless part of the working city, rather than a reconstituted ‘Main Street’ (Warren, 1994; Francaviglia, 1996).
There are two broad themes which this thesis indicates merit further attention: the first suggests means to further our understanding of the Goad data and the role it plays in envisioning the street and its change, while the second suggests extensions to the current work.
There is little material available to allow us to check the accuracy of the Goad data, both in terms of the site details, and more importantly in the picture of the street that they provide. With annual data collection, it is clear that there may be substantial amounts of change which go un-identified within the Goad material, in particular the low levels of site modification (renovations etc.) that were identified by Goad when compared with the number of occupant and use changes Goad identifies. In particular, this relatively infrequent data collection ensures that it is difficult to identify precisely the role vacant sites play in the street, as we have little indication both how long sites are vacant, and how much of the total amount of site change involves vacancies aside from those identified at the time of the ground surveys. To accomplish this, it is suggested that a series of ground surveys similar to Goads be done at much more frequent intervals, arguably monthly, for at least two years, which should provide enough data to allow comparisons with three sets of Goad material. This would allow us to comment far more authoritatively about the accuracy of the Goad material, and would provide a basis for analysis of the differences between rates of change calculated from the Goad data and that calculated from more frequent surveys. It would also provide an opportunity to study the role of vacancies in the landscape in much more detail by identifying vacancies missed by annual data collection. This would also allow a more nuanced analysis of the role of vacancies as transitional elements in the process of site change, and would allow the length of time sites were vacant to be accurately determined. We have identified that the Goad material infers substantial levels of site change (both in terms of occupants and boundaries) without explicitly identifying the changes that happen between surveys: a more frequent survey would provide a suitable and straightforward opportunity to identify much more of the street’s renovation and reconstruction.
There are wider questions the research raises which should be followed up in subsequent studies. Of all the results, perhaps the most surprising was the indication that the rate of change in both Regions was broadly constant over the entire length of the study, with noticeable increases correlating to local site redevelopment rather than external economic events, including the downturns of the 1980s. Because of this, there is a significant case arguing for the extension of this particular study to cover the remaining years of the 1990s, in an attempt to determine whether the cyclical swings in the economy can be easily detected within the Goad material.
The research also indicated that tracking the numbers and changes in local multiples seemed to provide considerable insights into the state of the local economy in the two study Regions. Extending this by adding material from any of the additional Regions within Edinburgh would help to give a broader and substantially more complete picture of the role of these sites. In addition, expanding upon the existing dataset would allow us to isolate the impact the size of the sample set has had upon these very contextual analyses.
While this research has emphasised the importance of detailed local research into the changing nature of the street, it does provide an insight into only two relatively small if important Regions of central Edinburgh. As such, since it has been clearly shown that it is possible to transcribe large amounts of Goad data and systematically analyse it, there is considerable scope for the wider usage of this material as a basis for broader overviews of the specificities of local change. In particular, the material could be used to provide wider comparisons of the types of changes seen within cities themselves, as here in Edinburgh, and with other cities, both within and outwith Scotland. While the Goad material is not without its flaws, it does provide a valuable and so far under-utilised resource for studies of recent urban change.
The street is important: it provides a framework for much of the urban experience. It has been an afterthought in much geographic thought, only recently revived but still often thought of as merely the site of buildings and activities (consumption, spectacle, flânerie) which are in themselves far more interesting to academics than their built context. It represents a centre of lived experience, the point where many of the dominant processes shaping society are articulated in our neighbourhoods. The street is ‘our’ landscape, not that of the postmodern trope that is Disneyland, or a pale reflection of the ‘world cities’ of Los Angeles and London, or the schizophrenic dinosaur that is the West Edmonton Mall. The street is not as easy to study as some of its competitors. It is not physically bounded, and is the site of struggle between numerous competing economic and political forces, unlike the mall developer or the work of unitary development authorities. In a world where ‘main street’ has been marginalised if not abandoned, and replaced by Disney’s Main Street USA, the street no longer has the iconic and cultural status of its competitors. While the mall may be a microcosm of ‘modern’ American society, with its monopolisation of space and place, dominated by chains, suspended in artificially crafted and fantasy environments, it does not follow that the mall is the archetype that defines all others. The street will always represent the locus of the European urban experience
Not only is the street important, it is also dynamic and, perhaps most importantly, has its own (local) history. This is an integral part of the street’s continued existence, and provides us with a means to study change. Although rhetorics of change and visions of the street and its future are important parts of wider discourses of the street, the need to ground the street in its own local history is an important counterweight to theoretical flights of fancy. This reinforces the need to study the local, and to recognise that change is not merely ‘the shock of the new’, but a more nuanced, transitional, shifting and ceaselessly reforming and recreating process. It is the dynamics of change and stability that give the street its place, that represent the reality of its modern existence.
These local histories of change and stability question the wider rhetorics of change and transition, by highlighting both the unique local patterns of transition and identifying the difficulty in mapping theory onto the recalcitrant streetscapes of the modern city.
