The local icon: Reuse of buildings in place marketing

This paper assesses the use of listed or significant buildings by retailers in creating a sense of place, and specifically the opportunities for local places to market themselves through reuse and regeneration of existing buildings. It addresses the issues identified in the New Economics Foundation's Clone Town Britain Survey that ‘a home town is a place that retains its individual character’ and, by comparison with the bland and undistinctive clone town, ‘is instantly recognisable and distinctive to the people who live there, as well as to those who visit’. Much of the distinctiveness, or lack of it, is unfortunately caused by retail outlets. Consequently, the focus of this paper is to explore the causes of undistinctive building design and examine both more recent contextualised approaches to retail use and reuse of buildings and spaces. The authors draw on research into the visual role of buildings in creating identity and shared history, as well commercial and social purposes. Distinctive buildings should engage with the local community as well as attracting a wider population, and retail sites should combine communication and design as well as commercial functions. Such buildings often have a size and scale to support distinctive opportunities for retailers to interact with consumers. The paper proposes four categories of retail reuse: individual buildings; larger developments; new build on brownfield sites; and the reuse of design concepts in new projects. It concludes with an overview of the implications of distinctive commercial buildings for place management and the making of better places.