Oxford Street: a return to former glories?

The London mayor said "urgent action" is needed to regenerate Oxford Street as he announced a new plan for the West End's famous high street.

Oxford Street was "once the jewel in the crown" of Britain's retail sector, said Sadiq Khan, and he is resurrecting a previously rejected plan to pedestrianise part of the street.

Antidote to gaudy US candy shops

MPs and retailers alike have long "sought to breathe new life" into a street whose "renown and cultural position on the most expensive side of the Monopoly board has long been at odds with a down-at-heel reality", said The Guardian.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The way people move around the street has often been at the heart of the conversation. During the 1960s there was a plan to "carry shoppers via a travelator" and in the 1970s there was a plan for a "track carrying cars on air cushions" but both ideas "failed to take off".

More recently, Oxford Street has been "blighted" by an "influx of gaudy US candy shops, vape vendors and empty store fronts", said the Daily Mail. "Rising crime, the Covid-19 pandemic and online shopping" were blamed for its "shocking demise".

This summer, hopes emerged that a "series of new businesses" could "signal a change and return the world renowned road to its former glory".

An easy win

Khan hopes to keep that momentum going with his new plan. "Almost a century after horse and carts were banned in an attempt to end slow moving traffic" a big change is planned, said The Guardian.

A 0.7-mile stretch would be pedestrianised between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch, with the prospect of further changes east, towards Tottenham Court Road. The project is expected to cost around £150 million and Khan hopes that "local businesses, private funders and new revenue streams could foot the bill", said the BBC.

"All the evidence suggests a pedestrianised street, a well-designed street is safer, is greener, is healthier," Khan told Marie Claire. It would entice customers back, attract better retailers and leave fewer vacant stores, a "win win win".

Pedestrian panacea or problem?

Oxford Street's "spiralling tawdriness" is a "miserable advert" for London, said James Innes-Smith in The Spectator. The "candy stores and tourist tat 'luggage' emporiums, the gang fights and phone snatchers are an embarrassment". So "something has to change" and once traffic has been removed, the street's "astonishingly varied architecture will finally come into its own".

But "the Oxford Street of our youth is never coming back", said Hannah Ewens on the i news site. London rents are "excruciatingly high" and if government support "isn't there", the street will "continue to be lined with businesses that contribute absolutely zero to both tourists and those living in London".

The move "will not be the panacea for shoppers on foot" that Khan imagines, said Paul Clements in The Independent. The "masterplan" is "guaranteed to infuriate black cabbies" and means the "elderly shopper or busy mum" will no longer be able to "hop on a double-decker outside John Lewis or hail a cab outside Selfridges".

The Labour head of Westminster Council said the plan could increase crime and make it a target for terrorists, said LBC. "A pedestrianised scheme poses a different set of challenges for hostile vehicle mitigation" than one that retains traffic, in "order to keep shoppers safe from terrorism", said Adam Hug.

There has also been pushback from Conservatives, who blocked Khan's previous attempt to pedestrianise part of the street in 2018. Now, they say the plan will be unpopular and that Khan is "forcing things through", said the BBC.