VIABILITY CONCEPT FOR ENHANCING HISTORIC TOWN CENTRES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Abstract

In the UK, historic town centres have been successfully planned and implemented to avoid a conflict between conservation and development. Preventive measures were developed to protect the built heritage from threatening forms of development. As a result, they can keep on evolving properly to supply quality goods/services and a pleasant environment. Rebuilding this balanced mix of conservation and development has been made through the use of the viability concept. The term viability is used to determine whether a town centre has a capacity for living or not. Viability includes the ability of the centre to attract continuing investment to maintain the environment. This concept was constructed for investigating the town centres’s health in order to maintain their position in a changing environment. The evaluation framework for town centres’ health focused on four essential characteristics supporting the viability of town centres: attraction, accessibility, amenity, and action. These four basic qualities of 4 A’s refer to what draws customers to town centres, how easy it is to reach town centres, how pleasant town centres should be, and what brings success to the improvement of town centres.

The main factors affecting viability are also discussed: the loss of consumer diversity reduces commercial opportunity; the loss of trade and business reduces the attraction, activities and consumer choice; the loss of investment makes non-viability; and the loss of image causes low confidence in the centres - the sign of high risk. This leads to the implications for sustaining the centre’s unique mix of functions, which would be possible if reconstructing the ability of town centres is made through reversing those circumstances. These successful experiences in regenerating a large number of historic town centres in Britain may contribute to a search for enhancing viability of historic town centres in Thailand and elsewhere.