“We have a fantastic opportunity right now to use the inevitable move towards remote-first and flexible working to rebuild and regenerate some of our towns.
~ Me, the other day
Places like Southport, for one example, where there are already great transport links, beautiful parks, lakes and community spaces and amazing architecture could be rediscovered and reinvented to work for modern family setups and new ways of working.
A holistic approach, embracing digital for those who do (what we really should no longer think of as) ‘office work’ will further open up opportunities for non-office work; not just cafes and bars etc., but trades, supporting services, independent shops, health and wellbeing services – everything.
Given the right support and a logical, realistic plan, many towns and villages across the UK could be reimagined to support and encourage economic and social growth, bringing people in (or back! Imagine not having to move away from your family support network, to cram yourself into a city for a better paying job!) and making the UK a great place to live and work.”
I wrote the above into a little text box recently asking about my motivations for signing up to a newsletter (The Entrepreneurs Network if you’re interested).
I’ve been mulling this over quite a lot in recent months, but I first started thinking about it when lockdown opened up just enough for us to have bubbles and to be able to go out in open spaces. Me and my mum went for a wander around the marine lake in Southport, there was a guy at the café entertaining everyone, it was a chilly but sunny day and it just felt like a little bit of – not normality, because it was still far beyond normal – but a little bit of positivity.
Everyone was still terrified as fuck. Everyone was still wary of getting anywhere close to anyone else. But right at that moment, everyone was just getting along. Embracing that bit of cold sunshine and making the most of the wide pathways and open shelters. Embracing being able to be out and about, not so much with other people but alongside them. Seeing other humans being human.
Just a few centuries ago, unless you were off to sea, the majority of people worked either ‘from home’ or very close by, in the same town they lived in (or city, because cities did and always will have a purpose, they just weren’t the only place). People’s ways of making a living weren’t necessarily dependent on one specific thing that took up the entirety of your day. Everyone had ‘side gigs’, except they were just part of daily living, offering a bit of extra cash or something to barter for something else.
The Victorians and Edwardians developed and built places like Southport for holidays and getaways but for them to function properly, they needed to be worked in – and lived in – by people too.
This thing we’ve done in recent decades where we’ve made it almost impossible to remain in your home town, where we’ve sucked the life and cash out of seaside resorts and market towns and hurked it into giant city-shaped spittoons, actually has the glorious potential to be just a historical blip.
We think – because this current way of working is pretty much all many of us have known – that it’s inevitable that these towns will continue to waste away.
We think that we must somehow compensate those landlords of giant office buildings for the last few years by crushing our selves and our souls back into crammed cities and returning to the status quo.
But we don’t have to.
It’s no longer necessary. Things have moved on. As humans, we’ve spent a lot of time, energy, money and more creating things we can use to work more flexibly. So we should use them. It would be insane not to.
“But!” I hear you (not you, obviously, I mean those people whose job it is to ‘gotcha’ us normals so they can continue to suck up to their masters, you know who I mean).
“But! What about those people who aren’t office workers, who keep the city functioning, what about them?! Eh? Eh? What will they do when the jobs – and the money – have been redistributed across the UK? What then!!1?”
Well, my faux pearl-clutching friend, they’ll do what they’ve always done. They’ll do the exact same thing as we all did when we got syphoned into cities in the first place. They’ll do what every graduate has been told to do for the last 30+ years.
They’ll go where the fucking money is.
And at lunchtime they can sit in a fancy wrought iron shelter with a very good sandwich from a local shop and watch the swans and feed the ducks. And it’ll be sunny, though it might be cold, and there’ll be a guy singing 80’s covers at the side of a pier.
🤔
1500 (Tudor Period)
- Total UK Population: ~3 million
- Urban vs Rural: ~90% rural, ~10% urban
- Largest city: London (~50,000 people)
- Most people lived in small villages or market towns. Cities were small, with only a handful having more than 10,000 residents. There were no seaside resorts yet, as tourism was not a major industry.
1700 (Early Modern/Pre-Industrial Period)
- Total UK Population: ~8 million
- Urban vs Rural: ~80% rural, ~20% urban
- Largest city: London (~600,000 people)
- Towns had grown significantly, especially with trade and early industrial activity. Seaside resorts were just beginning to emerge, mainly for the wealthy.
1800 (Industrial Revolution)
- Total UK Population: ~16 million
- Urban vs Rural: ~50% rural, ~50% urban
- Largest city: London (~1 million)
- Industrial cities (e.g., Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow) were expanding rapidly, but a significant rural population remained. Seaside resorts like Brighton and Blackpool began developing.
1900 (Victorian/Edwardian Era)
- Total UK Population: ~40 million
- Urban vs Rural: ~75% urban, ~25% rural
- Largest city: London (~6.5 million)
- The majority now lived in cities or large towns due to industrialisation. Seaside resorts were thriving with the expansion of the railways, making them accessible to the working class.
1950 (Post-WWII)
- Total UK Population: ~50 million
- Urban vs Rural: ~80% urban, ~20% rural
- Largest city: London (~8 million)
- Seaside resorts peaked in popularity due to domestic tourism before the rise of cheap foreign holidays. Rural depopulation continued as agriculture became mechanised.
2000 (Modern Era)
- Total UK Population: ~58 million
- Urban vs Rural: ~85% urban, ~15% rural
- Largest city: London (~7 million)
- The urban population continued to dominate, with smaller towns growing, while traditional seaside resorts began declining due to package holidays abroad.
2020s (Present Day)
- Total UK Population: ~67 million
- Urban vs Rural: ~83% urban, ~17% rural
- Largest city: London (~9 million)
- Seaside towns have seen economic decline, while some rural areas have experienced population growth due to remote working.