ABSTRACT
In the early 2000s, the institutional investor that owned the Metropolitan Centre in Barnsley put their stake up for sale together with a number of other shopping centres. The Barnsley skyline, with its town hall tower standing on a hilltop, led him to suggest that Barnsley should be modelled on the Tuscan city of Lucca. There are issues of scale, from towns with populations in the hundreds of thousands like Reading, Preston and Lincoln, to tiny places like Totnes, Ludlow, Slaithwaite or Ashington. The city centre of Coventry, comprehensively rebuilt after the bombing raids of the Second World War, was for many years seen as a model of modern retailing that many other places would emulate. It is also tempting to see a diversity of uses bubbling up from community activity and local entrepreneurship.
