- 10 hours ago
- 2 min read
Fifteen Homes With Shop Fronts, June 2026
I began this journey thinking it would be quite a charming little feature, 'oh look at these lovely shops you could buy and open a gallery'. This I fear I was at best naïve and at worst patronising.
After spending time trawling through the market, it is hard not to notice how neglected many of our high streets have become. The centres of our towns and communities, once bustling places that people flocked to, have in many cases fallen out of favour with the public.
It is difficult not to reflect on what we, as a nation, could do better to revive these backbones of community. What would persuade people to walk through a shop door rather than reach for the hideously convenient Amazon? I am no stranger to the lure of Prime delivery myself, but it does irk me that we have handed so much of our spending power to a company that has been repeatedly criticised for the treatment of its workforce. Drivers are pushed hard, warehouse staff walk extraordinary distances every day and many employees appear to be treated as though they are entirely disposable.
Perhaps these jobs are not necessarily harder than those of previous generations, but the lack of dignity and respect afforded to workers does little to combat the sense of hopelessness felt by many people trying to make a living.
Retail is by no means perfect, but I cannot help wishing there were ways to support independent businesses that genuinely contribute to their local area. Perhaps that support should be funded, at least in part, by those online giants that have benefited so greatly from the decline of the high street. As someone who runs an online business, that may sound like cutting off my nose to spite my face, but it feels a sacrifice worth making if it helped breathe life back into our town centres and strengthen our communities which increasingly seem fractured as are relationships form online rather than on the pavement.
A rething of business rates would seem an excellent place to start!
