Lou Reed famously sang that there was only one good use for a small town. When you grow up in a small town you 'grow down' - 'you hate it and you know you'll have to leave'.



But something interesting is happening in many of our small towns: something that many larger places, still in hock to cloned aspirations of economic development and an institutional inertia that appears to believe the development boom of the last decade will return, have yet to…

Guest post by Martin Blackwell

Thursday 05 July 2012

originally posted on the ATCM website www.atcm.org



Since the not-for-profit ATCM was founded in the early 90s, we have worked with hundreds of locations around the UK, and overseas, to support people and communities in shaping environments to make town centres better, where local people feel a sense of ownership, and visitors are made welcome and business can thrive.…

High street gurus SpeakTo are offering an hour’s free consultancy to town centres that have missed out on the £1.2 million pot of Government cash to rejuvenate their shopping areas.

The town centre consultancy has been inundated by enquiries from disappointed high streets in need of help. 

From Holyhead to Herne Bay town centres have contacted SpeakTo expressing their frustration about losing out on the Portas pilot money, wanting help now to capitalise on the work already…

I think that some members here, especially from Scotland, will be interesetd in a lively, but informed, discussion I have instigated on High Streets in the RTPI Scotland Linkedin discussion group (You do not have to ne an RTPI member to join that group). It follows the publication last week of a 'Vulnerability Index' that is an attempt to measure vulnarability and lay out the town centres across Scotland that are most at risk of literally dying in the face of the recession. The aspects of…