Pity those poor souls who live in Exeter. It’s an attractive city, with a pretty cathedral green and pleasant quayside. But, according to the New Economics Foundation (NEF), it is also Britain’s number one ‘clone town’.
According to an NEF report this week, ‘a clone town is a place where the individuality of high-street shops has been replaced by a monochrome strip of global and national chains, somewhere that could easily be mistaken for dozens of bland town centres across the country.’
Based on a national survey, it found that 42 per cent of British towns could be classified as clone towns, with a further 26 per cent on the cusp. Exeter, for example, has only one independent store on its high street.
But does any of this matter? And why, in particular, should Christians be bothered?
There are a number of reasons, some more obvious than others. The quality of relationships is central to the kingdom of God but the commercial centralisation that creates clone-towns can disfigure those relationships by treating individuals as economic units rather than full human beings.
In a similar way, biblical teaching articulates a principle of ‘subsidiarity’, in which political and social power is decentralised so that communities themselves (rather than distant clone-store-owning shareholders or business executives) run their own affairs.
Perhaps most subtly, the biblical vision of wholeness celebrates variety, with ecological, ethnic and cultural diversity being one of life’s glories. In the words of Jonathan Sacks, ‘the unity of God is to be found in the diversity of creation.’
Not only does the massive concentration of retail power in the UK and the clone towns it breeds drain money from local economies and dry up the relational glue provided by genuinely local shops, but it also bleeds the variety from creation, leaving the world a drabber, more sterile place.
None of this is to suggest that those who work for ubiquitous chain stores are particularly sinful, or that small town shopkeepers, so mercilessly satirised in The League of Gentlemen, are particularly saintly.
It is, however, to say that we need to change our shopping habits and campaign for the kind of policy solutions outlined in the NEF report – a moratorium on takeovers, local retail planning laws, community land trusts – if we wish to enjoy, in Louis MacNeice’s words, ‘the drunkenness of things being various’.
According to an NEF report this week, ‘a clone town is a place where the individuality of high-street shops has been replaced by a monochrome strip of global and national chains, somewhere that could easily be mistaken for dozens of bland town centres across the country.’
Based on a national survey, it found that 42 per cent of British towns could be classified as clone towns, with a further 26 per cent on the cusp. Exeter, for example, has only one independent store on its high street.
But does any of this matter? And why, in particular, should Christians be bothered?
There are a number of reasons, some more obvious than others. The quality of relationships is central to the kingdom of God but the commercial centralisation that creates clone-towns can disfigure those relationships by treating individuals as economic units rather than full human beings.
In a similar way, biblical teaching articulates a principle of ‘subsidiarity’, in which political and social power is decentralised so that communities themselves (rather than distant clone-store-owning shareholders or business executives) run their own affairs.
Perhaps most subtly, the biblical vision of wholeness celebrates variety, with ecological, ethnic and cultural diversity being one of life’s glories. In the words of Jonathan Sacks, ‘the unity of God is to be found in the diversity of creation.’
Not only does the massive concentration of retail power in the UK and the clone towns it breeds drain money from local economies and dry up the relational glue provided by genuinely local shops, but it also bleeds the variety from creation, leaving the world a drabber, more sterile place.
None of this is to suggest that those who work for ubiquitous chain stores are particularly sinful, or that small town shopkeepers, so mercilessly satirised in The League of Gentlemen, are particularly saintly.
It is, however, to say that we need to change our shopping habits and campaign for the kind of policy solutions outlined in the NEF report – a moratorium on takeovers, local retail planning laws, community land trusts – if we wish to enjoy, in Louis MacNeice’s words, ‘the drunkenness of things being various’.
Nick Spencer
1 comment:
you are welcome kristen and nice to see you again...
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