![\"Barber](\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Barber.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOur daily constitutional takes us uphill. Late afternoon, defying a gloomy weather forecast the sun breaks through.\u00a0 We could take that as a good sign. Well, why not?<\/p>\n
If it wasn\u2019t for the Covid notices<\/strong> in almost every shop window I might think I\u2019d just woken out of a long, disturbed and disturbing sleep. Like Bobby Ewing I\u2019ve stepped out of the shower to find the last four months nothing but a bad dream.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in the more optimistic days of July, when Scotland\u2019s First Minister talked of eliminating the coronavirus, I was beginning to record some feelings and photographs as we eased out of lockdown.\u00a0 We made our way cautiously up Broughton Street, the centre of our local Edinburgh \u2018village\u2019, navigating through a flow of mostly cheery looking folk. Local caf\u00e9 culture seemed alive and well. Tables of drinkers and diners on the pavement outside pubs and restaurants.\u00a0 On the sunny side of the street.<\/p>\n Now, chill winds of autumn seem to blow a different forecast.\u00a0 A late afternoon walk takes me through still-crowded streets ( a little too crowded for comfort). Cars queue in home-going congestion. Where are they coming from in a world of home-working?\u00a0 And how long will this movement continue now that the Covid count is accelerating upwards once more?<\/p>\n There are cheery, cheeky signs of life in shop windows. Queues for take-aways outside improve the takings of adventurous restaurants offering socially distanced menus inside. Sanitisers in every doorway. \u201cRub a Dub darlings\u201d says a shop door notice.<\/p>\n How long will this contradictory new reality last? Freedom to spend money in shops and pubs and restaurants may not be the great new tomorrow we dreamed of back in April\/May. But it buys some notion of normality.\u00a0 While the money lasts.<\/p>\n Even as doors opened in July there was a sense of suspended animation. Businesses and jobs have been protected by the extraordinary spending of the Tory chancellor, Rishi Sunak. That was due to run out by the end of October and, while the new upsurge in Covid infections has brought a new injection of life-supporting cash, the latest measures are less generous. Thousands of\u00a0jobs are set to disappear.\u00a0 Debts are piling up. How will that affect the small independent businesses in places like Broughton?<\/p>\n Time will tell. Are we all so caught in the headlights of pandemic panic that we dare not pause for breath to look more closely at what is happening around us. Does anyone have headspace to research the consequences of community resilience? \u00a0 Why is <\/em>Broughton Street so busy? Who is spending? Has September 2020 been the last flicker of a struggling economy?\u00a0 Or are we seeing the first signs of hyperlocal revival?<\/p>\n During the mournful early mornings of the first lockdown Ray and I would walk the empty streets \u2013 there was an eerie beauty about hearing birdsong and\u00a0 breathing fresh air even as we morbidly wondered how many of the boarded up businesses we were passing would survive when the city came back to life. How many of these closed doors would reopen?<\/p>\n Turns out quite a few are open, so far.\u00a0 The craft and design shop Concrete Wardrobe has, sadly, not made it. That eating place on the corner \u2013 the old launderette of yesteryear \u2013 has just been reinvented for the fifth time. And the pub up the road, the old Mathers Bar which inexplicably became The Empress of Broughton Street, is closed and up for sale.<\/p>\n But there is still a buzz about the street.\u00a0 The fish monger and butcher are busy.\u00a0 Hardy souls drink outside local pubs. (Hardier souls inside.) Our corner shop has proudly increased its range of fresh food and has plans for a side line in home-made meals.\u00a0 As self-isolation forced us to discover back in April, small local businesses have responded to needs and opportunities with a mix of compassion and commercial good sense.\u00a0 Often these businesses are a family way of life, or a community enterprise, with loyal customers.<\/p>\n Welcome to a better future?<\/p>\n The Financial Times is a barometer of economic change. While much of the media heralds the end of the high street, the death of city life, there are more interesting stories to investigate.\u00a0 In their \u2018return to the office\u2019<\/a> series the FT reports on enterprising development of hyperlocal co-working spaces.\u00a0 \u201cA new co-working model is emerging\u201d, says the FT, \u201cAnd it\u2019s probably happening on a high street, or in a hotel lobby, near you.\u201d<\/p>\n The end of the long commute into city hubs via road and rail could perhaps see a revival of smaller town centres.\u00a0 But Norman Foster doesn\u2019t rule out the revival of dynamic city life.<\/p>\n In the most cheering article I have read for a long time (The Pandemic Will Accelerate Evolution of the Cities<\/a>: The Guardian) the 85 year old architect celebrates the endless human capacity for creative response to catastrophe.\u00a0 Just as devastating plagues, fires and pollution hastened essential changes in London city life over the course of 500 years, so \u2013 Foster asserts convincingly \u2013 Covid will speed the evolution we need for sustainable cities in an era of climate change.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n City centres will have the potential to be quieter, cleaner, safer, healthier, more friendly, walkable and bike-able and vitally, if the opportunity is grasped, to be greener. (Norman Foster)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We do need such galvanising hope.\u00a0 Edinburgh is full of symbols of what needs to change. The cranes winking and blinking above the unfinished \u2018Retailopolis\u2019 of St James Centre while cavernous empty\u00a0 space yawns in the nearby Omni Centre completed in 2002. \u00a0 Could these be our new post-Covid community hubs, centres of creative, collaborative new activity? Are we ready to adapt?\u00a0<\/p>\n First published on the author’s site<\/a><\/p>\n Further reading:\u00a0<\/p>\n UK cities should work for people who live in them:<\/a> Neil McInroy; Centre for Local Economic Strategies<\/p>\n Dumfries town centre revival scheme unique and ambitious<\/a>: BBC Scotland\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nHow long in lockdown?<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nA family way of life<\/h2>\n
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