Do You Live In A Clone Town?

The New Economics Foundation (nef) is asking people across Britain to respond to a survey on their main streets, with the results to be published next year. The survey is designed to discover the extent to which chain stores are driving out local businesses, resulting in inditical urban environments.

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.

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.

The report also includes a survey to "find out if you live in a clone town."

[Editor's note: The link below is to a 3MB PDF file.]