UK Sustainable Communities action

The UK Parliment is about to do a grand thing in terms of making the UK once again "a nation of shopkeepers". That is shopkeepers in the traditional sense, with the shops in a town's center actually being owned and operated by townspeople independent of any franchise. That means if you spend money in the shops, it will be recycled into other community shops instead of some substantial percentage going off to the main headquarters and a bunch of non-local investors interested only in a maximum return on their investments. Yes, local shopkeepers are investors, too, expecting a maximum return, but they aren't just thinking about money. Their rewards come in a lot of other forms that matter much more when it's your shop and your neighbors are the customers. Without that franchise looking over your shoulder, you can customize your shop to local demand, work the hours of your employees around local activity hours, and so on and so on.

The fly in the ointment, of course, is how do you encourage this? How do you give locals the power to turn away the chains without pouring all the money for your program into lawyers? Some of the possibilities are to lower business rates (business tax rates on property and profits) to locals. I guess I'm a radical, but I'd like to do something about the warehousing of buildings, leaving them unoccupied in the center of town (Norwich has a lot of these, unfortunately). Make them business incubators, rentable by the month at reduced rates for those starting out. Sell them off if they remain vacant for a certain period of town. Or, here's a really radical thought, legalize mini-business squatting or homesteading in such buildings.

The good thing is that all parties seem to be in agreement that something is to be done. What will be ironed out in the committees and whether it has any chance of actually being effective is yet to be known.

The Great Good Place: an idea

The idea of The Great Good Place, also talked about as The Third Place is not my original idea. There is a book out by Ray Oldenberg (spelled from memory) about it. When I describe it, I know you'll recognize it. If you find that place, wherever you are, it's as if you've found the doorway to the community.

Back in the early 70's, I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia. At that time, in that place, The Rising Sun Bakery was such a place. People who went there shared tables with strangers. Ideas hatched. Linkages were made.

The reason I mention it in this blog is that in a crafts discussion on Craigslist, someone asked what would bring customers back again and again to a yarn shop. There were a number of things mentioned, child friendliness, a proprietor generous with knowledge and advice, a gathering of knitters, etc. And then someone mentioned the idea of "a third place". The idea is that we all have at least two places that are our homes, our home and our workplace, and we all continually search for "a third place". Central Perk was that place in Friends. The beauty parlor was that place in Steel Magnolias. Apparently, Starbucks attempts to be that kind of place (which finally explains why people will pay so much for, let's face it, a cup of coffee, there).

Ah, but can any corporate entity (which, face it, Starbucks is, after all) be a real "third place"? Maybe, sometimes, if the people make it so, and if the corporate entity values such a phenomena happening. (I think back to a writing group at a Barnes and Nobels in Orlando, Florida, in 1988 which provided the entirity of my meager social life through a blighted year in exile without a car in Florida, though I'm fairly certain the bookstore had no idea of the valuable thing that was happening there.)

On the other hand, a small business that sets itself out in the beginning to become such a place puts intself in the position to offer something that larger entity it is trying to compete with will have trouble providing. I'm sure there must still be such places all over the world in town after town and neighborhood after neighborhood. If you know one, would you please comment on this post and identify it? Wherever it is, it deserves our patronage. It's certainly the first place I look for when I go to live in a new place, and I would love to know the name of Norwich's third place.

This is how we do it.

There's a great story in The Guardian this Saturday. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, of the famous River Cottage cooking school, will be opening a food store. Seems he was approached by Tesco (Americans, think Wal-Mart starting with groceries and moving on to the rest rather than the other way around.) to become the public face for the company.

One of his major points in teaching cooking has always been paying attention to what he calls unnecessary "food miles". Local sourcing pays off in good cooking. He is also concerned about the destructive influence of big supermarkets on village high streets (downtowns) and markets.

But cooking is his business. The rest of us may accept that he is right, but find it impractical to wander all over the county on a regular basis to buy locally.

So, he's going to make it easier for those who live in the vicinity of Axminster, his local town. He's planning on opening a store in the town center that will sell ONLY locally sourced food, taking care to support rather than compete with local enterprises.

Norwich!!!!!! You with the big market in the middle of town!!!! Are you listening????