Abstract：This paper explores the existential crisis on traditional shopping streets (high streets) driven by the rapid move
to shopping online. The paper examines the nature of traditional shopping streets and how they are changing,
conceptualises the distinguishing characteristics of traditional forms of retail and online shopping, through a new sun
model discusses the factors that determine shopping choices, argues that we have shifted from a movement economy
and centrality paradigm to a place attraction one, and explores, in this new context, the different approaches to shaping
the future of traditional shopping streets. Ultimately, it asks what are the key place-based intervention factors that can
help to guarantee a future for our high streets? This paper is a conceptual and speculative piece, based on the heuristic
investigation of professional, policy, industry discourse and analysis, and empirical evidence. This analysis informs the
first half of the paper in which a “sun model” of shopping choices is conceptualised. The discussion is international
in scope, although much of the evidence draws from sources within and reflecting on the situation in the UK with
approaches taken in England used as a case study in the second half of the paper where three proactive intervention
factors are illustrated and discussed. The UK is particularly advanced on its journey away from traditional retail so the
data and policy approaches being explored in the country reveal much about challenges and opportunities that we might
expect as the existential crisis facing traditional shopping streets plays out around the world.
