Why It Matters Distance to Nearest Town Centre
Summary
We have captured the distance between your neighbourhood and the three town centres closest to.
Definition
Town centres in London are classified according to their existing role and function in light of health checks taking into account criteria which include scale, mix of uses, financial performance and accessibility. In London, there are six broad types of town centre which perform different but complementary roles. Individual town classifications can be found below:
| Classification | Meaning |
|---|---|
| International centres | London’s globally renowned retail destinations with a wide range of high order shopping opportunities in addition to highly specialised offerings, served by the best available levels of public transport accessibility. |
| Metropolitan centres | These town centres serve wide catchments which can extend over several boroughs and into parts of the wider South East region. Typically, they contain at least 100,000 sq.m of retail, leisure and service floorspace with a significant proportion of high-order / comparison goods relative to convenience goods. These centres generally have very good accessibility and significant employment, service and leisure functions. |
| Major centres | Major centres are ordinarily found in inner and some parts of outer London with a borough-wide catchment. They generally contain over 50,000 sq.m of retail, leisure and service floorspace with a relatively high proportion of comparison goods relative to convenience goods. They may also have significant employment, leisure, service and civic functions. |
| District centres | The centres are distributed more widely than the Metropolitan and Major centres, providing convenience goods and services for more local communities and accessible by public transport, walking and cycling. Typically they contain 10,000–50,000 sq.m of retail, leisure and service floorspace. Some District centres have developed specialist shopping functions. |
| Neighbourhood and more local centres | Neighbourhood and more local centres typically serve a localised catchment often most accessible by walking and cycling and include local parades and small clusters of shops, mostly for convenience goods and other services. They may include a small supermarket (typically up to around 500 sq.m), sub-post office, pharmacy, laundrette and other useful local services. Together with District centres they can play a key role in addressing areas deficient in local retail and other services. |
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| First Nearest Town Centre | This is the name of the nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Distance to first Nearest Town Centre (m) | This is the distance in metres to the nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Distance to first Nearest Town Centre (km) | This is the distance in kilometres to the nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Second Nearest Town Centre | This is the name of the second nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Distance to second Nearest Town Centre (m) | This is the distance in metres to the second nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Distance to second Nearest Town Centre (km) | This is the distance in kilometres to the second nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Third Nearest Town Centre | This is the name of the third nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Distance to third Nearest Town Centre (m) | This is the distance in metres to the third nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Distance to third Nearest Town Centre (km) | This is the distance in kilometres to the third nearest town centre to this postcode. |
| Town Centre Variety Proximity | This is the sum of the distance in kilometres between this postcode and its three nearest London Town Centres. |
| London-wide Average Town Centre Variety Proximity | This is the London-wide mean sum of the distance in kilometres between this postcode and its three nearest London Town Centres. |
| Variance from London-wide Average Town Centre Variety Proximity | This is how this postcode sum of the distance in kilometres between its three nearest London Town Centres and the London-wide average. |
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
Commercial inhabitants are affected by their proximity to local towns because of the competitive advantages this provides. The lower a Town Centre Variety Proximity score, the more probable it is that they are located closer to a variety of congregations of people and therefore larger customer bases to consume the goods and services they provide. Additionally, given that the inner and central parts of London include the largest supply of work opportunities, the broadest range of shops, and the highest diversity of service facilities, there is considerable evidence to support the assertion that the survival of firms based in outer London is intrinsically linked to their ability to remain accessible to more than one of London’s many towns.
They can also seek to differentiate themselves by employing “localisation” strategies as many of the most successful businesses today are realising is advantageous. Studies comparing our retail centres to those in mainland Europe have confirmed that customers are increasingly drawn to buying from and dealing with local businesses or global businesses that adapt to suit their locale, as it is felt that they provide a more personalised service, more tailored to the needs of the average local inhabitant, a model which has long been the norm in mainland Europe and has been one of the reasons behind local businesses thriving more in these countries.
This is encouraged by the marketing of local areas as destinations, rather than each SME marketing for themselves which is supported by policy at the government level. Local authorities have picked up on this here and are making increasing attempts to mimic these governmental strategies of mainland Europe. The more homogenous offerings of large global brands which do not adapt to their location increasingly do not have the uptake one might expect in all locations, especially where consumers have access to SMEs with a more localised offering.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
How close your neighbourhood is to a town centre is one of the factors that will most shape how you experience where you live. It will dictate your access to goods and private services such as accountants or hairdressers; transport hubs; employment; community services, such as libraries; and access to leisure or public spaces such as parks and town squares.
Proximity to major towns gives one access to services that serve a global market, for example flagship stores of large international brands; access to luxury goods and services; and major commercial services, but there is an ever growing body of evidence that demonstrates that proximity to local town centres and the SMEs and community services they contain holds equal if no more amenity value for inhabitants, as thriving town centres and high streets have a huge impact on community cohesion, the average health of a neighbourhood’s inhabitants, diversity of consumer choice, the vibrancy of these town centres and, the overall liveability of the village, town or city that you reside in. Studies also show that residents derive many psychological benefits from being near local town centres as these smaller SMEs often provide more in-depth advice, more of a personalised service and sometimes a level of empathy which makes community members feel more comfortable in their neighbourhood.
These localised offerings have been reported to make inhabitants feel more “emotional proximity” to these goods and services than those offered by global brands, even if the purveyors are in fact equidistant. For example, studies have shown that greater empathy and community understanding shown by local made community members favour using these services over nearby global brands due to the increased amenity value that these SMEs offered. Residents have also been reported to feel more of a sense of community and liveability about their local neighbourhood when SMEs are able to offer services which are more tailored to the particular ethnic make-up of the locale.
Sutton is a typical suburban town centre, with a number of nearby homes (Photograph: Tony Monblat, Wikimedia Commons)
General Commentary
Small to medium local businesses, the type one might find on their local high street or nearest town, constituted over 99 per cent of all retail companies in Europe in 2003. While only 34 per cent of groceries’ sales take place through SMEs in the UK, this figure rises to at least 55 per cent in some European countries, including Spain.
Despite Great Britain and western European countries like Spain being subject to the same overall EU directives, policy affecting retailers is very different here as compared with such continental countries. For example, the Spanish SME retail sector has benefited from rather generous levels of government intervention, and subsidies for retail-led town centre management schemes. In the UK this has been often the responsibility of local authorities and this has not included promoting whole districts of a town rather than individual shops. This once resulted in lost opportunities to conduct integrated strategic area-based marketing campaigns.
We have seen in the UK a revival in the fortunes of certain high streets and town centres where they are home to goods and services which are highly adapted to the locale and are more personalised. This is a reversal on previous thinking that consumers and retailers alike benefitted from a homogenous offering regardless of place. Perhaps even more helpfully, rather than a reversal we can think of it as a return to how business was transacted since time immemorial, apart from the fact that our retail sector and opportunities for consumers have been enhanced by the benefits that globalisation has brought. In London, consumers have the best of both worlds as they have access to services that serve a global market, for example flagship stores of large international brands; access to luxury goods and services; and major commercial services, in districts such as the West End and Stratford, but being a city made up of villages, we have many local high streets with their increasingly bespoke offerings peppered in amongst these global names.
Trivia
The home furthest from the closest town in the world is thought to be in Iceland on the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago, Elliðaey Island. The single structure on the island was originally built as a lodge for puffin hunters.
History
Since the origins of man we have engaged in trade. In Stone Ages times this would have consisted of sharing and bartering goods with other subsistence or nomadic farmers. One of the oldest known methods of recording monies owed is thought to be tally sticks used in the Aurignacian era 30,000 years ago. It was the Mesopotamian civilisation that developed a large-scale economy based on commodity money. The shekel was the unit of weight and currency, first recorded c. 3000 BCE, which acted as a reference to a specific weight of barley, and equivalent amounts of silver, bronze and copper.
Merchants have been mentioned in some of the earliest texts we have. Merchants and merchant networks are documented as having operated in Babylonia, Assyria, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Persia and Phoenicia. During the European medieval period, a rapid expansion in trade and commerce, led to the rise of a wealthy and powerful merchant class. The European age of discovery led to the establishment of new trading routes and gave European consumers access to a more globalised offering of goods. From the 1600s, goods began to travel further as they found their way into geographically dispersed market places. Following increased contact with Asia and the discovery of the New World, goods were imported from very long distances: calico cloth from India, porcelain, silk and tea from China, spices from India and South-East Asia and tobacco, sugar, rum and coffee from the New World. By the eighteenth century, a new type of manufacturer-merchant was emerging and modern business practices with this.
The modern chain store was born in 1859, the year in which the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company opened its first grocery store. F. W. Woolworth, opened his first variety store in 1879 in Utica, New York. Chain-store firms grew rapidly in the coming decades, in sales and in their, and by 1929 22 percent of total U.S. retail sales came from chain stores. Growth was most dramatic in grocery retailing and in variety stores.
The popularity of chains was not the result of a superior offering, as we the consumer may be led to believe today; executives limited the range of goods available and kept tight control over store design and managers’ discretion in these relatively small-sized stores. Low price was the USP, and advertisements predominantly featured sale items. Their ability to offer lower costs items was the result of these firms’ investments in their own warehouses and distribution networks and engendered the birth of “economies of scale”-lower unit costs through high-volume sales. These chain stores also lowered labour costs by adopting self-service, a practise considered radical at the time. Firms also developed techniques for choosing store sites. Executives fuelled the real estate boom of the 1920s in their fevered search for sites that would attract the maximum possible number of potential customers—so-called 100 percent locations.
Finally, in their ongoing attempts to increase sales, chain stores established themselves in African American and white working-class neighbourhoods. This won them the loyalty of shoppers who felt that chains’ standardised practices generally translated into more equal treatment of customers than did the more personal, but sometimes discriminatory, service in grocery and department stores. Thus, social dynamics as well as low price help to explain the success of chain stores.