How temporary pop-ups can reveal a path to sustainable cities

The rise of the #pop-up shop may be a temporary response to a malaise within town and #city centres thanks to falling footfall and shuttered stores. But the format can ironically give lessons on long-term #urban #sustainability.

The pop-up shop is often seen as a short-term sticking plaster to cover over the scars on the high street created by the collapse of big name retailers such as Wilko, Debenhams and Topshop. But despite their temporary nature, they have the potential to support the movement towards sustainable cities.

There is no doubt that the ubiquity of pop-up shops is a response to economic forces that have led to traditional shops and outlets being shuttered up. The growth of online shopping and home delivery, the Covid-19 lockdowns and the recent cost of living crisis have combined to undermine the business case for bricks and mortar retail. Footfall is down around 5 per cent year on year while almost a third of shopping is now done online.

The rise of the pop-up seems to be an instant response to that opportunity. It is obviously hard to get fixed figures for a moving phenomenon but five years ago, retail consultants Elastic Path estimated its value at £2.3 billion with almost 30% of British businesses beginning their entrepreneurial journey as a pop-up.

Sustainable start-ups

But despite their inherent nature as “here today, gone tomorrow” outfits, pop-ups can play a constructive role in the preservation and development of central urban spaces in four ways.

The first is the potential vacant sites can play as hosts of sustainability-oriented commercial initiatives based around concepts such as upcycled fixtures and products, environmentally friendly practices and carbon-saving technologies. A New York boutique retail outlet, Figure Eight, created an eco-friendly marketplace for luxury products that were sustainable from drawing board to recycling. London’s Regent Street Edit on Crown Estate land featured six sustainability-focused brands.

Second, pop-ups can provide short-notice solutions to meet sudden spikes in demand that cannot be met by traditional suppliers. Many Britons benefitted from vaccines at pop-up clinics held in parks, churches and high street spaces as hospitals took advantage of available spaces. In one reverse arrangement, a corner shop chain installed 20 pop-up stores in hospitals to serve doctors and nurses who could not travel to stores.

Third, pop-up spaces can enable start-up businesses to test their model in a way that would be more challenging if they had to take out a multi-year lease. Homeslice Pizza, which sells the Italian food whole or by the slice, took out a “residency” in a former petrol station in London’s King’s Cross that was being converted into a public space. A year later it opened its first restaurant in Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden. In June 2024, a former Wilko store in Walthamstow, east London, will host the Stow Bazaar made up of small retail units.

Finally, and away from retail, communities can use vacant spaces as temporary homes for displays and meetings to facilitate debate around pertinent local issues and projects in ways not easily available through the governmental channels. In 2000 I was involved with a pop-up hosting proposals to redevelop a piece of industrial land in northwest London: 25 years later that land has attracted a developer.

One study looked at two pop-up spaces: one aimed at getting community feedback on an Australian electricity supplier’s vegetation management programme; and another on active transport on campus at a university.

Identity and resilience

Whatever their purpose, activities that “pop up” in vacant urban spaces support sustainability in many ways. Many accounts point to the positive reaction from local people that “at least somebody believes in our town”. By filling in gaps and engaging with the community, they can help strengthen feelings of identity and resilience that are essential to future sustainability.

But at the end of the day, it could be said that these pop-ups only exist because of wider failures of economic management and urban planning that have led to the vacancies in the first place. Herein lies the most significant potential impacts of the pop-ups.

On the one hand, they highlight the need for the sort of city-wide planning, management and investment that can create a sustainable city that will no longer have space for these temporary innovations. But on the other, they show how any vision of a sustainable city must include the capacity for these unplanned and spontaneous novelties that show that the city is a truly living and lived-in space.