Young, wealthy singletons are colonising Britain’s once-deserted city centres before moving out to settle down, a study released on Wednesday revealed.
The ”conveyor-belt” effect of a rapid turnover of inhabitants is leaving many city centres without the established communities common in continental Europe, the study said.
City centre dwellers outside of London were twice as likely to be single than the average Briton and were typically young professionals on good salaries, the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank said.
Their priorities were drinking, shopping, and dining out, said the ”City People: City Centre Living in the UK” study, which focused on Manchester and Liverpool in northwest England and Dundee in Scotland.
Several provincial city centres, particularly in northern England, have undergone an urban renaissance in the past 15 years.
Many have witnessed a building surge of buy-to-let one-bedroom flats that has helped to stem the population drift to the suburbs.
For example, Britain’s third city, Manchester, has seen its city centre population grow from 3 500 in 1991 to about 15 000 in 2001.
The report said lasting communities were unlikely to develop in such city centres.
”So far we have not brought Barcelona to Britain… it is unlikely that continental-style city-centre living will fully take hold in Britain,” the report said, according to the Financial Times newspaper.
It argued that suburbs should now be the target of regeneration spending to attract families.
”Family friendly city-centres should not be a priority,” it said.
Max Nathan, one of the report’s authors, said the buzz of the city centre would always attract young adults for a short time.
”Young people want to live in the city centre because it’s fun and they can keep in touch with their mates; they’re not interested in knowing their neighbours, being part of a community or being there for the long-haul,” he said, according to The Guardian newspaper.
”They’ll stay there for a bit and then move on. City centres aren’t normally places for settling in.
He said parents’ priority concerns were pollution, schools, noise and open spaces.
”You would have to change the whole way a city works to accommodate families,” he said. – AFP
