As retailers and developers flock to MAPIC, one of the burning questions on many people’s lips will be whether the recent Northern Rock/sub-prime-inspired credit crunch problem communicates itself to the High Street, both in the UK and beyond. In the crucial run-up to Christmas that issue will perhaps be felt keenly, but our retail environments must not only adapt to economic fluctuations – they must attend to the continuing need to fight off other threats such as online retail and the consequent necessity for differentiation in order to get dwell time and enable shopping centres to become centres of interest and/or high quality attractions. Or do they? In this issue, we assembled a roundtable to discuss the much-hyped ‘threat’ encapsulated in the growing penchant for online retail against its bricks and mortar ‘rivals’. The future, it seems, looks rosy. Because the future is multi-channel. That same High Street is mutating, with certain long-term fixtures on it being forced to re-evaluate their positions. We’re talking banks, travel agents, even estate agents. In Redesign This, we ask architects to meditate on another of those changing, latterly industrial-action-troubled institutions – the Post Office.

A good, old-fashioned regeneration-through-retail response can work too, however. In Hull, a City which is seeking to cast off misconceptions, prejudices and ‘worst city’ tags, the response is rapid and many-headed, but is centred on effective physical regeneration and major retail investment. On a smaller scale, the Brunswick in central London, a troublesome but in some quarters much-loved 1960s icon, has been reborn through the introduction of a careful new retail mix and sensitive custodianship. And, if sneak previews are anything to go by, the new St Pancras (pictured), not far from Bloomsbury, promises to add further high quality weight to a part of London that is in a state of rapid renewal. The station developers’ and architects’ achievement – of subtly integrating high quality, well chosen retail, a farmers’ market and the longest champagne bar in Europe into such a richly historic environment – promises to at last offer a gateway into this country that is fitting and a source of pride. Next year’s MAPIC will be a whole different journey…
David Taylor, editor