Will Peckham residents benefit from the regeneration of Rye Lane in south London - or will local businesses be ousted? Pete Boyce, director of City Farmers, considers if the benefits of the ‘smart city’ will be spread around equally
The potential of the internet of things to improve our daily lives, reduce our environmental footprint, and make cities more interesting places to live cannot be ignored. Technology is already achieving a lot using sensors, wireless networks and apps to guide our lives, this technology must develop in harmony with residents. If not, however smart your city is, people will find ways around it.
As our economy recovers, many inner city regeneration projects in the UK are beginning to progress again. Supported by central and local government, often involving private capital, these projects promise a brighter future for an area, with beautiful plazas full of pedestrians and cyclists, planters that know they need water and lighting that calls for a bulb change and dims when not needed.
One such area is Peckham in south London, and more specifically Rye Lane. For those who don’t know it, one look at Rye Lane would be enough to make you realise this isn’t an area struggling to attract people.
Rye Lane bustles with shoppers, earlier this week
Pedestrians jostle to visit a diverse range of individually owned stores as there is barely enough room to move on the pavement. Those trying to save provincial town centres cannot dream of such activity.
Rye Lane is the perfect melting pot: there are at least 20 different countries represented among the shops’ proprietors. Where building design doesn’t meet the needs of the community, a solution will be found. Currently, one large retail unit that could not be filled is now run as an incubator, with the leaseholders offering short term lets to those wanting to start a business.
But to others it’s seen as an area of low-value shopping, and Southwark Council has harboured plans for redevelopment for many years. As these plans come to fruition, businesses will be asked to move on, including some that have been there for a generation. These may not be businesses that attract affluent commuters, but they have served their community well enough to survive many economic cycles.
Afro Food Centre has traded on Rye Lane for 20 years
You can’t deny some of the improvements: the Victorian façade of the train station will made more visible, a new public plaza will be welcomed and a market-place will replace the garages and scrap merchants currently plying a trade out of the railway arches. But developers will need paying; can small businesses be relied upon to guarantee returns? Why let your retail space to 10 small businesses that might not all make it, when one or two chain stores could guarantee your return for 10 years?
Imagine what the existing businesses owners could achieve, their ingenuity working alongside the latest smart technology, if the space was designed around them. If not, then a thriving community may well become another anonymous shopping centre. The entrepreneurial opportunity presented by a neglected area is replaced by a conveyor belt of McJob opportunities.
You may not agree with me, and prefer Westfield to Rye Lane, but the wider social implication needs to be assessed in the same way we view environmental impacts. Evidence is growing that local businesses not only serve their proprietors, but benefit to the local community around it as money is spent locally by these businesses, on local accountants, with local suppliers and using local marketing. What good does attracting new shoppers do for the residents of an area if all they get out of it are minimum wage jobs?
Beyond the wider economic losses that can be felt when local businesses close, is it possible a collective intelligence is lost? Does the intuitive entrepreneur work better in a smart city than a paycheque worker not inspired by what they do? Those who own their own businesses certainly have the economic imperative to efficiency; demonstrated by the comparative increased productivity of Worker Coops. With the opportunity presented by the internet of things, motivated smart people will be needed to realise them.
Photos by Jess McCabe
