My hometown shows that high streets have to change or die

The empty building that used to be the home of Marks & Spencer in Aberdeen is one of the first things you see when you arrive off the train and come into the city centre. The sign has gone, though the shape of the lettering can still be made out; the windows are blacked out and the doors boarded up.

This is my hometown. As a teenager, I spent hours on Union Street, its main thoroughfare, nicknamed the Granite Mile after the local silver-grey stone. It was the place to try on all the latest fashions from the likes of Clockhouse and Chelsea Girl.

The street used to be packed with shoppers from across the north-east of Scotland.

Now, it's pockmarked with empty shops.

"I come to Union Street to take a bus somewhere else... there's nothing to shop for now… it's horrendous," complains Marie Sim, a lifelong Aberdeen resident.

It's a similar story across the country: High Streets, once bursting with shops, hit first by the rise of out-of-town retail centres and then by online commerce.

But Aberdeen is in the thick of an ambitious turnaround plan. The port city has essentially declared war on its empty shop problem, taking an unusually hands-on approach to filling vacant units and bringing long-neglected upper floors of buildings into use.

On top of that, the council is pouring tens of millions into trying to make the city centre a destination again. Like many other places, it's leaning into the "experience economy", with a new indoor food and drink market and a major redevelopment of the seafront.

High Streets are integral to how we feel about where we live. The sight of vacant shops and graffiti can quickly become a vicious circle, deterring shoppers, discouraging investment and leading to anti-social behaviour.

Politicians of all stripes have been trying for years to breathe new life into town centres - and Andy Burnham, who has made a focus on "place" part of his political identity, is the latest. He argues they should become "symbols of Britain's renaissance".

But can it be achieved? And if they're to survive, do town centres need a fundamental rethink?

'Too much retail space'

One in eight properties on British High Streets are currently vacant, according to Green Street, the property and retail analytics company, a number that's stayed stubbornly high for years.

"If there was a silver bullet, it would have been fired years ago," says Jackie Sadek, a former government adviser on urban regeneration, who has spent nearly four decades working in town centre renewal.

One of the biggest obstacles is fractured ownership. Shops and buildings are often owned by dozens of different landlords, sometimes through offshore companies or complex structures, each with their own interests and priorities. That can slow decision-making and make large-scale regeneration difficult.

But even with empty units that are available, you need to find someone willing to take them on.

Many units are old and need modernising.

The cost of running a High Street business has also risen; employment costs are higher, and there's the burden of business rates.

Firms need customers. Footfall on many High Streets has been in long-term decline as shopping and services move online, and this enormous structural shift has yet to play out fully.

Two-thirds of town centre experts think there is still 20% to 40% too much retail space, according to a survey by retail body Revo and real estate consultancy Lambert Smith Hampton.

Whack-a-mole shop filling

In Aberdeen's boom years of North Sea oil, from the late 1970s through to the early 2010s, it didn't have to work hard to fill its hotels and restaurants and get the cash tills ringing because of the wealth the energy industry brought to the city.

I remember weekends with friends as a teenager, spending whatever cash we had in the fashion chains and shoe shops. Later came the pubs and bar-hopping, and trips to the art deco Capitol Theatre (now office space), where I saw Duran Duran.

But by the end of 2022, Union Street had hit rock bottom. Aberdonians had long deserted the High Street for a shopping centre, which opened in 2009 next to the railway station.

"They'd fallen out of love with their city," says Bob Keiller, head of Our Union Street coalition, a community-led group formed after an emergency summit to reverse the decline.

The first thing it did was listen to what residents wanted, receiving thousands of submissions. Restoring a bit of civic pride and filling empty units became the focus.