Can Future Shopping Experiences Be Present in the Past? The Case of a Local High Street

Abstract

This chapter is a contemplation on the future experiences of local high streets based on analysing the past and present of one such local street, Södergatan in Helsingborg, Sweden. This street was established in the mid-nineteenth century, in an emerging working-class district, Söder, whose initial residents lived in crowded conditions. Without any modern technologies for storing food, or any cars for travelling longer distances, they walked everywhere, that is, to specialized stores, to work, and to school, on a daily basis. This created a vibrant street life with plenty of opportunities for social encounters. However, the establishment of new residential areas, shopping malls and supermarkets on the outskirts of the city gradually emptied the district post-1950s, until international migrants repopulated it post-1980s. These migrants took over small-scale stores and revived many of the previous retail and shopping activities occurring along this local high street. While this development bolstered the vibrancy of the street, part of the district was restructured as a distinctive consumption space based on luxury experiences. Hence, drawing on the case of Södergatan, there might be a dual future trajectory for local high streets with the first of these thriving on the sense of convenience and mechanisation of everyday items and the second providing up-scaled services to an upper-class clientele.

Introduction

The book The Experience Economy (Pine & Gillmore, 1999) can be seen as the key work introducing the phenomenological concept of ‘experience’ into the discipline of economics, helping to build bridges between cultural and economic analyses. Starting out from here, the concept is later used in research on services and applied to different empirical fields, such as tourism, place marketing, and retail. An overall theme among the works employing the concept of ‘experience’ is visitors or customers, while engaging with consumption practices, not only seeking to fulfil utilitarian needs, but also searching for embodied experiences. These experiences can be socializing with one’s fellow humans, soaking up the specific atmosphere of a place, taking sensorial journeys from the here and now with the help of nature, art, music, design, and going to amusement parks, flagship stores, theme restaurants, theatres, and museums. Entire cities try to promote themselves as experiencescapes, equipped with spectacular architecture, city festivals and other major cultural events. On a smaller scale, a retailer can add value to its merchandise by curating a special in-store decor, providing attentive service or having a selection of specificized goods (cf. Pantano et al., 2018). But what can be said about the experiences a mundane high street can cultivate? How have these experiences changed over time? How will future experiences feel? This chapter looks to past and present retail configurations and to the experiences embedded in a local high street, Södergatan, in Helsingborg, Sweden, and by doing so, it speculates on the future trajectories of high streets and city centres.

The Temporal Thrown-togetherness of a High Street

Södergatan is a typical local high street where mainstream Swedish retail, such as chain stores specializing in fashion, hardware, toys, and home electronics, has left and been replaced by independent businesses offering low-margin groceries, goods and services, mostly run by transnational migrant entrepreneurs. But the case of Helsingborg shows that this kind of retail reconfiguration is not limited to local high streets outside of the very centre of the city. Instead, mainstream retail itself is also losing its terrain in the city centre. Some of it is clustered on the central pedestrianized street Kullagatan, but most of the national and international chain stores have relocated themselves to the Väla out-of-town shopping mall. Their replacement businesses are the ones found in many contemporary city centres today; real estate agents, hairdressers, nail salons, dentists, massage parlours, gyms, restaurants, fast food stands, cafés, and convenience stores.

The academic contribution made by this chapter is shedding light on the lack of a historical dimension, while also discussing the future of retail. This is additionally relevant when it comes to analysing experiences embedded in retail places, because the experiential dimension of the retail sector is often seen as something that has emerged during the present day, promoted by a new generation of capital-strong national and international retailers. For both researchers and retailers, politicians and urban planners, without any deeper knowledge of retail history, their historical knowledge of retail transformation processes is probably limited to their own lifetimes. Some of them might be aware that this transformation started in North America post-1950s, when suburban malls replaced downtown areas as retail centres, reaching Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. They have witnessed crowded shopping streets gradually becoming deserted while mainstream retail establishments started leaving for out-of-town malls and, later on in the 2010s, partially turning digital. For someone born in the 1960s or 1970s, it is possible to remember how city centres looked before this wave of retail decentralization hit. Only those born in the 1930s or 1940s, on the other hand, might remember the real heyday of the city centre and the post-war consumption boom. Thus, it is not surprising that there is very little discussion of retail transformation predating this, something this chapter will try to do.

Certaeu reminds us that all places are haunted by ‘hidden spirits’ (cf. Certaeu 1980/1984, p. 108); lingering from the past and shaping the present. The past interferes with the present, both through its material remnants and through its retold and remembered memories, stories, and accumulated experiences. Secondly, the future emerges, or branches of from, the present while also pulling the present of a place into various trajectories (cf. Schatzki, 2010). The upcoming municipal projects, private investments, and changed reputations, as well as the emerging activities, all play a part in how a place is experienced in the present. The present is, in that sense, thrown together; that is, it merges together countless pasts and futures. Following the same line of thought, and in order to make a prognosis for the future of a local shopping street such as Södergatan, it will be crucial to comprehend both its past and present.

The Circular Retail History of Södergatan

Södergatan (South Street) has been through all the typical phases of retail development over the last 150 years. Originally, it was a country lane heading south from the City of Helsingborg, reaching agricultural fields. Up until the 1850s, as seen in Image 23.1, the surrounding area was farmland, with some cottages and windmills scattered around. During the second half of the nineteenth century, industrialization reached Helsingborg whose population then increased dramatically from about 5000 in 1850 to about 50,000 in 1920. Söder, the area south of the town where Södergatan lies, quickly turned into an industrial and working-class district, typical of the period (Ranby, 2005). The district grew around major manufacturing facilities: In the empty plots of land between the factories and roads, small buildings started to spring up without planning permission from the municipality. Most of the new inhabitants came from the nearby villages, but also from areas further away in Sweden. The most common professions were factory worker, iron worker, railway worker, carpenter, bricklayer, and blacksmith (Folklivsgruppen, 1987, p. 16).

Image 23.1

Söder, 1860s. Söder emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century as an industrial and working-class district to the south of the city

As seen in Image 23.2, in the early 1900s, little remained of the district as regards its previous countryside character, and neither did it look like an extension of the old City of Helsingborg. Söder was overcrowded: Its flats were small, damp, unhygienic, and cold. The district was also plagued by noise, dirt, smoke and unpleasant smells, mostly originating from manufacturing facilities. However, the district was also vibrant, being full of movement, people, and retailers. Long working days and the fact that there was no means of transportation other than walking made this kind of district very dense. Since people had very limited space for storing food in their homes, and since there were no refrigerators, they also had to leave home several times a day to buy groceries, contributing to the vibrancy of the district.

Image 23.2

Södergatan, 1900s. Within a short period of time, Söder was annexed to the mediaeval town centre of Helsingborg from the south, with its smoky factories, small shops, and simple residential buildings

Goods and services were always close at hand for the early residents of Söder: Along its local high street, Södergatan, the entire ground floor level was reserved for retail. The shops were small and independent, and there were so-called mom-and-pop stores (cf. Boyd, 1997), which were run by families living in the same building. Most of these were convenience stores with a huge range of items; but as seen in Image 23.3, due to hygiene regulations, many kinds of fresh groceries had to be sold in specialized shops. When looking at shop signs, on old photos, the most common shops in Söder, besides general grocery stores, between 1880 and 1930, specialized in meat, fish, tobacco, coffee, or bread. Vegetables were sold on the market square. These shop signs also indicate that there were some shops selling paint, wallpaper, furniture, flowers, hats, pastries, music instruments, and jewellery. Clothes shops were rare since it was customary to make clothes at home, and to repair them once they had worn out. However, cafés were popular, particularly among the youngsters of the district, and with their furniture extending outside, they made a great impact on the general atmosphere of the local high street. One reason for this was that, since people lived in very crowded conditions, there was not much space for young people to socialize with each other.

Image 23.3

Södergatan, 1920s–1930s. The ground floors of houses were reserved for retail. There were so called ‘mom-and-pop stores’, which were run by families typically living in the same building

Living in crowded conditions, with the need to shop several times a day, created an intense street life and spontaneous encounters, complete with everyday small talk. Shopping was, however, a much more gender-divided activity compared to today. It was rare to see a man buying bread or milk, and very seldom would a woman buy a cigar, go to a furniture-maker or visit a bar. During this early industrial period, both working and living conditions were hard for the majority of people, especially in typically working-class districts such as Söder. On the other hand, the sense of togetherness and community was much stronger, and there was no need to put any effort into fighting social isolation and loneliness, today posing a major threat to the wellbeing of residents of modern countries (cf. Valtorta & Hanratty, 2016). The photos taken during these times almost always show plenty of people strolling along the streets, spending time in shops, at cafés, in factories, in their backyards and on their doorsteps.

Starting in the 1930s, and accelerating up until the 1970s, a wave of modernization affected Söder. This was not an isolated phenomenon but something that was occurring all over Sweden, as one of the poorest of Europe’s countries became one of the wealthiest. Entire blocks of nineteenth century city housing were demolished and large modern buildings replaced them. Everything was to be larger and more modern; flats, offices and retail places. Thanks to these renewal projects, the new modern buildings, and the modern retail formats, Södergatan was then becoming a part of the city centre. Large department stores were established on Södergatan, namely Domus (see Image 23.4) and Tempo, with an abundance of goods exhibited on their shelves: Fixed prices became the norm and shop windows were designed as spectacles, with roof-top parking spaces on offer. Later on, supermarkets also found their place in the district, introducing self-service, shopping trolleys, and shopping bags. Södergatan was ready to invite shoppers from all across the city for a modern shopping experience (Aretoft, 2011).

Image 23.4

Södergatan, 1960s. The district became part of the city centre and was home to modern retail formats such as the Domus department store

However, in the 1980s, the district started to take off in another direction due to major external development. First, the manufacturing facilities of the district, as in many ‘Western’ countries, either closed down or moved their operations to remote parts of the world where costs were lower (cf. Knox, 1997). Meanwhile, the better-off traditional working-class families of Söder longed for greener surroundings and moved to newly established suburbs. They were replaced by transnational migrants, mostly coming from countries south and east of the Mediterranean (Högdahl, 2007). This process led to the re-segregation of the district: Helsingborg’s previously class-based spatial demarcation was also racialized, just as in many other European and North American cities (Pred, 1997). In the beginning, these migrants made little impact on the retail offerings of Södergatan, but that soon changed.

Similar to many mid-sized cities in Western and Northern Europe, retail in Helsingborg started shifting in the 1990s from inner city locations to out-of-town destinations (cf. Kärrholm & Nylund, 2011). Department stores, chain stores, and other typical mainstream retail establishments started to leave Söder in the 1990s: By 2010, very few of them were left. The modernization efforts, the adjustments to modern retail formats, and the customers arriving in cars had all been in vain. As seen in Image 23.5, entrepreneurs with roots in other countries filled the majority of these empty stores, reviving much of the retail tradition and atmosphere of the early Södergatan and Söder. Once again, small family-owned shops providing everyday services and goods became dominant on the ground floors of Södergatan. But this time, many of the goods were imported from other countries, with many store signs being in Arabic due to the mass migration occurring after the Syrian civil war.

Image 23.5

Södergatan in the 2010s

Besides the convenience stores, with their mixed goods and groceries, the common categories of retail today on Södergatan include specialist stores selling meat, pastries, sweets, tobacco, and gifts. Hairdressers and cafés, as well as restaurants selling food from the countries where these migrants originated are to be found on every block along this street. Vegetables and fruit can still be bought on the main square; a retail format undisrupted since the establishment of the district. Almost every retail business in the district is making a living on typical low-margin goods and services, as it was a hundred years ago.

Two Different Shopping Experiences

Today Södergatan, as a local high street, offers two radically different shopping experiences, but only one of them is being celebrated. The first is provided by the newly renovated inner-city mall, opened in the old Domus building. When the Domus department store was closed down in the mid-1980s, the owners of this massive building converted it into a mall by dividing its vast inner space into smaller sections. However, in the early 2010s, there were few retailers left in the mall and the impression it gave was looking like one of the North American ‘ghost malls’. Finally, the building was sold and all the remaining tenants were evicted. For years, the building remained closed while the new owner looked into how it could be rebuilt, repopulated, and reconceptualized. By that time, it was obvious that mainstream retail was not going to come back to the high street and thus a different concept was needed. The new concept involved reorganizing this mall around upper middle class experiences. But they were unable to market the mall as an experience centre until new strong anchor tenants had been secured. A luxury movie theatre was to be the primary anchor. Number two was a large sports bar with bowling lanes. Number three was an American-style franchise café of the kind to be found in upmarket areas of city centres. With these tenants, promoting luxury experiences, high-end fast-food chains, beauty salons, and hairdressers also aligned themselves. The only traditional retail store belongs to a Swedish supermarket chain and there is also some retail space reserved for pop-up fashion stores. Together with a newly built luxury hotel just to the left of the main entrance, this new ‘experience mall’ is to act as a magnet for consumers and visitors with very little in common with the others dwelling in the district. The real estate owners and property developers of the district hope that this could be the beginning of a gentrification process for Söder and Södergatan, slowly conquering the rest.

A vibrant street life, supported and enabled by the small-scale independent stores owned by migrant entrepreneurs, is the second kind of experience Södergatan offers. However, this is neither marketed nor celebrated at all by the municipality, or the local politicians. So, even if every town centre manager in Sweden today dreams of vibrant streets, late-opening shops, old-school specialist stores, unique fragrances, social encounters and community-building, multicultural districts such as Söder are mostly considered a problem instead of an asset. In municipal visionary documents for town centres, there are many conceptual pictures depicting middle-class people on pedestrianized and idyllic streets. People are often well-dressed, laughing, cycling, talking to each other, or using their mobile phones: They are otherwise busy and productive citizens and thus deserve their relaxation. There might be some degree of multi-ethnic awareness while producing these kinds of visionary images, but often, all of the human subjects are young, active and ‘urban cool’. A vibrant street life supported by unemployment, boredom, gangs of teenagers, busy bus routes, segregation, ethnocultural pluralism, poverty and crowded living conditions all seem to be more complicated to promote.

A closer look at the street life of contemporary Södergatan, however, shows several interesting aspects linking these contemporary shops run by migrants with the notion of the ‘experience economy’. People are not just dwelling on the street because they live and are trapped in the district, or shopping there just for the sake of lower prices. For his dissertation project, Aslan (2021) followed informants on their shopping trips on Södergatan. It turned out that the reason why people were engaged in shopping activities in the district was the object of a much more complicated rationale. Shoppers frequent Södergatan to find special goods and services that are impossible to find elsewhere in the city. They come for the late opening hours. They want to socialize with friends and to make new acquaintances while shopping. They enjoy the ‘old school retail’, whereby shopkeepers build personal relationships with their customers. They hope to reconnect with the cities, goods, and services, and lives, they have left behind elsewhere in the world. Aslan found that Söder is not only attracting newly migrated refugees, but also that the district is popular among Swedish and international students, highly skilled expatriates, tourists and many ‘native’ Swedes from other parts of the city. Most of them shared the idea that Söder and Södergatan were providing a valuable alternative to the shopping opportunities available in the city centre, or the out-of-town mall. This is why this kind of everyday, low-margin local shopping street could claim its place in the city: Many consumers prefer such retail sites because they appreciate the fact that these streets are vibrant, full of life, and social. They like the fact that these streets lean into the past while reaching out to other places in the world. This kind of high street exists because it is uniquely different. By recognizing the importance of this kind of everyday experience, urban planners and politicians could protect, improve, and market local high streets, central high streets, and city centres in a more nuanced way. Attractions providing experiences, both for locals and tourists, do not always have to be new, innovative, spectacular, expensive, or high-tech.

Looking into the Future

By learning from the past, and looking at the present, it is possible to underline the fact that Södergatan has two future experiential trajectories, the first of these being more ‘modern’ and the second leaning more towards what is perceived as ‘traditional’. In the first scenario, curated and sterile commercial playgrounds for an upper-middle class clientele will secure its existence by offering luxury entertainment. In the second scenario, vibrant and messy street life will continue to flourish due to independent shops, selling low-margin services and goods, providing convenience, sociability, and heterogeneity. In both futures, there will be little space left for the type of retail that has been occupying the city centres since the 1950s.

Will both future scenarios be realized and expand into the rest of the city centre of Helsingborg, and other cities? It still seems unlikely that city centres will be completely outside of mainstream retail (the way we learned that retail looked over the last 50–70 years). However, the number of such retail stores is shrinking every year in the city centre of Helsingborg. Shops are closing down, going digital or moving out to Väla, the out-of-town mall. In the city centre today (2022), together with the other older central districts (including Söder), there are only around 100 ‘traditional’ retail businesses left (except for food stores, cafés, restaurants, hairdressers, beauty centres, etc.). Compared to this, there is more than double the number of such retail places at the Väla mall, and in its neighbouring big-box establishments.

Retail Evolution and Devolution

The temporalities of places are intertwined: Change taking place in the social world does not necessarily unfold in a progressive, linear manner, but it also happens recursively. Nevertheless, most of the existing literature concerning retail history derives from a linear understanding of temporality, often employing the term ‘retail evolution’. As is the case with local high street Södergatan, the change in course in the organization of retail and offered experiences is both ‘evolutionary’ and ‘devolutionary’. The present day retail organization, retail mix, and the shopping experiences provided have more in common with how it was a 100 years ago than, let us say, 50, while a totally new kind of retail organization is emerging in parallel in the meantime, promoting luxury experiences. Hence, the retail of the present is always an assemblage of the different retails of the past, their material, organizational, and experiential ruins, where potential retail futures are also opening up.

While talking and speculating about retail futures and shopping experiences, it is vital to reflect upon what has been left behind, what is enduring, what is being resurrected, and what is emerging. Part of the future of the high street might already have been written a long time ago, disguised in dusty archives and blurry memories, and it is possible that some of the traditional retail formats, ways of shopping, are re-emerging at this very moment, and not only on Södergatan. While aspiring to take cars away from city centres, searching for fresh and local groceries, reducing packaging and plastic usage, longing for social contact, community, valuing convenience, regaining a daily shopping rhythm, and while many standardized goods and services are increasingly being shifted to out-of-town malls and the Internet, the high street and its retail, at least partially, might be heading towards something similar to what Södergatan functioned like as a high street a hundred years ago. In other words, in order to make prognoses about retail futures, we might first need to learn to be retail historians.