Future High Street

Coming from Melbourne to London, I have to admit I found the term ‘High Street’ baffling at first. Since the 80s, shopping in Australia has been about the ‘Shopping Centre’. They’re ‘climate controlled’, you see. In Melbourne, the weather is either far too hot or oppressively wet and grey, so escaping from the world outside to do your shopping follows a type of twisted logic. It comes as little surprise to discover Westfield, the developers behind London’s ambitious new shopping complex in White City [westfield.com/london] (they’re building a new tube station especially for it), is the same group who look after some of Melbourne’s largest shopping centres. The whole idea of ‘village life’ doesn’t really gel in Australia. It’s all suburbs, small towns and lots and lots of car parks, so the idea of every ‘village’ having a ‘high street’ becomes kind of fascinating.—It’s for this reason that I found Monocle magazine’s ‘Perfect High Street’ particularly exciting. You can watch and listen to the article on the website [monoclemagazine.com]. The article itself is fun but, unfortunately, has echoes of Wallpaper magazine’s early po-faced ponce and thinly sliced camp (which, actually seems to come across less irksome in narration than on the written page). But it’s the sort of article everyone would have an opinion on. Personally, I’d like to see this so-called ‘Perfect High Street’ completely pedestrianised but then I don’t drive. It also reminded me of Zozotown…

Zozotown [zozo.jp] is Japan’s wide variety of various retail obsessions laid out in one place… along a vast stretch of the internet highway. Each retailer has their own little piece of screen real estate on which to build whatever structure best represents their brand as well as being able to design their dream virtual store interiors. The concept has proved so popular that you can now climb Zozotower [zozo.jp/tower] to visit retailers hanging precariously off it’s various platforms or visit the curious Zozo Arigato [arigato.zozo.jp], which I have to admit, is kind of mysterious to this non-Japanese reader. Various cities and countries around the world are mooshed into a thin stretch of space across the top of the page. It’s cute… one thing though, Zozo… you spelt Australia wrong.