'CLONE TOWN BRITAIN' SURVEY LAUNCHED TO DISCOVER IF NATION IS LOSING ITS IDENTITY

DO YOU LIVE IN A ‘CLONE TOWN’? FIND OUT BY DOING THE NATIONAL SURVEY - CLICK HERE FOR THE Clone Town Britain Survey

A new survey to reveal how far Britain has gone towards becoming a nation of clone towns is launched today, Saturday 28 August 2004. 

nef is asking people across the country to carry out a simple survey on their high streets, with the results to be published next year. It’s designed to discover the extent to which chain stores are driving out genuinely local businesses, resulting in identikit urban environments. nef is also asking people to send photographs of the most ‘cloned’ parts of their town centres.

The survey is launched with a report, Clone Town Britain: the loss of local identity on the nation’s high streets. It looks at how Britain’s once distinctive and attractive towns appear to be losing the diversity of shops and services that their characters were built on. The report introduces the national survey and charts some of the wider forces that are creating homogenised high streets, as well as evidence from around the world of the growing backlash against them.

In 2002 nef began publishing the groundbreaking ‘Ghost Town Britain’ reports that highlighted the loss of Britain’s local shops and services and the emergence of ghost towns and communities with few or no services left. But at the same time another, related phenomenon is emerging on the nation’s high streets that are still economically active.

Andrew Simms, Policy Director of nef, said: “The apparent spread of clone towns has economic consequences as well, but more than that it suggests that outside a few metropolitan hotspots we are moving from ‘Cool Britannia’ to ‘Clone Town Britain’.”

The report argues that the appearance of Clone Town Britain has been aided by planning and regeneration decisions that have created a retail infrastructure hostile to small, independent businesses. It shows that the homogenisation of high streets is also not a benign or inevitable product of ‘progress’:

• Loss of diversity ultimately leads to a loss of choice for consumers as well as a loss of local character
• Replacement of locally owned outlets by retail multiples can damage the local economy as profits drain out of the area to remote corporate headquarters and local employment is destroyed
• The many people who now wish to return to local, high street shopping may find that their distinctive local shops have been replaced by “micro-format” supermarket or chain branches
   

For the report nef conducted a small sample of pilot surveys of randomly selected towns. Several had already achieved ‘Clone’ status, while several more were in the ‘Border Town’ classification that shows a significant displacement of local independent outlets. Smaller towns were more likely to be ‘Home Towns’, that kept more of their character with a better balance of more locally-owned shops.

Behind the drift towards Clone Town Britain are wider trends destroying diversity in arts, media and culture, and as an extreme example, even in human physical appearances. The report shows that as in food production and retail, news media, music and books have all seen significant consolidation of ownership. As a result on an average day people in many countries may have much of their news, entertainment, information, leisure activities, food and drink and even utilities all provided by one of a handful of massive companies.

The report argues that far from being the inevitable consequence of the remote forces of ‘globalisation’, these developments are in fact within our control. Examples abound of communities and local authorities taking steps to create and maintain diversity and the environment of their choice.

• In France and now Poland local authorities can veto any new shopping centre or supermarket over a given size
• The town of Carmel, California passed a by-law banning “formula” restaurants
• The Malaysian government placed a 5 year ban on new hypermarket development in certain areas

Across Britain, and internationally, there are many community groups fighting planning applications by supermarkets and other chain retailers

nef’s “Local Works” coalition launched a Parliamentary Bill that would give local communities and authorities in Britain given much more power over local decisions enabling more control over the types of shops and services that move into their areas
 

“Chain stores have spread across Britain because recognisable brands have a leverage that gives them an advantage over local shops. The unintended consequence is that local businesses get suffocated and our towns end up looking all the same,” says Andrew Simms.

“Chain stores proliferate like weeds in the garden. They have the marketing budgets, political contacts and resources that give them an unfair economic advantage over real local shops and services.  The danger is that unless we can figure out how to ‘weed’ some of the identikit, chain store shop fronts from our high streets we’ll all end up living in clone towns.”

Together the surveys and photos returned by the end of the year will be compiled to create a picture of Britain’s towns and cities today. Please send your photos, with caption explaining where they are, to the main nef address.

Download a simple survey here to find out if your town is a "Clone Town" - Clone Town Britain Survey

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	Publications Clone Town Britain Clone Town Britain Survey