New Report Brands Chiswick as a 'Clone Town'

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'Identikit chain stores' making the High Road soulless

A new report by the New Economics Foundation has identified Chiswick as a 'Clone Town'. The dubious honour is due to the takeover of the main shopping area by national chains at the expense of locally owned businesses. Ironically nearby Shepherd's Bush was the highest ranked area of London in the survey.

The report found 42 of the 103 towns it surveyed in England, Scotland and Wales had become clones, with few local businesses and a diminished range of specialist outlets leaving a soulless shopping district which does little to reflect the local community. Chiswick scored a possible 18.0 out of 60 making it one of the ten worst 'London villages'. The report says that locals soon become tired of "Latte-chino blandness" of stores like GAP and Starbucks after the initial excitement of their opening.

Andrew Simms, the author of the report, says, "Real local shops have been replaced by swathes of identikit chain stores that seem to spread like economic weeds, making high streets up and down the country virtually indistinguishable from one another. Retail spaces once filled with a thriving mix of independent butchers, newsagents, tobacconists, pubs, bookshops, greengrocers and family-owned general stores are becoming filled with faceless supermarket retailers, fast-food chains, and global fashion outlets."

The report recommends a series of measures to protect local businesses and limit the expansion of the retail giants but warns that the danger is that the situation is set to get worse with the inexorable drive to increase market share of firms such as Tescos likely to mean further closures of smaller businesses. They suggest that planning law could be used to require developers to guarantee affordable premises for locally owned stores and that market share limits could be place on larger retailers.

According to a report written by Alan Hallsworth of the University of Surrey for the Association of Convenience Stores in February 2005, "Tesco currently open one Express store each working day. As they expand, small general stores close at the rate of around one per day and specialist stores, like butchers, bakers and fishmongers, counted together shut at the rate of 50 per week between 1997 and 2002."

Tesco recently was involved in an attempt to open up a store on King Street, Hammersmith but the plans met with massive opposition with the campaign given strong support from local resident, Vanessa Redgrave.

It is also claimed that 'Clone Towns' are a breeding ground for anti-social behaviour due to the soul-destroying nature of their lack of individual identity and the unwillingness of many of the larger chains to support community activities and initiatives.

The report concludes, "We can choose to take action that will lead to thriving, diverse, resilient local economies across the UK; or, we can do nothing and condemn ourselves to bland identikit towns dominated by a few bloated retail behemoths."

June 9, 2005