Town Centre Regeneration: Learning to read the place
Richard Burgess
15 May 2026
In our latest insight piece, our Associate Richard Burgess reflects on the role architecture can play in shaping successful town centre regeneration.
What is a town centre regeneration project if not an attempt to inspire activity, establish momentum, and create a positive ripple effect across the wider town? The best examples I’ve seen do not simply respond to an obvious need. They strengthen everything around them, socially, economically and culturally, helping to build confidence in the town as a whole.
No building stands in isolation, and successful regeneration takes the time to understand what a place truly needs, because the ingredients of a thriving town centre run deeper and richer than they often first appear. The question is: what lights the spark?
Where people want to go
I love the notion that people make spaces work, and spaces make buildings work. As we seek to design buildings that revitalise spaces, we should first be asking, “What is currently drawing footfall?” and, perhaps more importantly, “What could be drawing footfall?”
A closer look at any town usually reveals the opportunity. Existing desire lines tell a story, and the most successful regeneration projects begin by recognising and strengthening them. Sometimes this is found in overlooked public spaces, underused buildings, historic assets, or even in the everyday routines that already bring people together.
Playing on the pivot of a town
A successful town centre needs to be a destination that attracts people from both within and beyond the town, ideally throughout the day and into the evening. Retail continues to play an important role in this, but the wider mix of entertainment, leisure, hospitality and culture is what broadens a town’s appeal and resilience.
National retailers and well recognised brands can also play a valuable role in regeneration. While independent businesses are often central to a town’s identity, established chains can provide confidence, consistency and reliable footfall that supports surrounding businesses. A busy coffee shop, supermarket or food outlet can become part of the daily rhythm of a place, helping to sustain activity and encourage longer dwell times in the wider town centre. The challenge is ensuring these uses contribute positively to the character and experience of the town, rather than operating in isolation.
And of course, this is often easier to achieve in towns with landmark cultural assets. A castle or a harbour will naturally act as a central pivot. Designing around existing assets not only drives footfall but demonstrates a commitment to a town’s history, creating a stronger relationship between old and new.
Travel to smaller towns in France and you notice something slightly different. Much of the newer retail has been built out of town. While this introduces separate sustainability challenges, it has also meant that many town centres are not entirely dependent on retail alone.
Those towns often retain a strong sense of character: a mix of bars and cafés, boutique shops, residential uses and public life that extends beyond the daytime patterns of a shopping centre.
When we play on the pivot, whether that is the castle, harbour, market square or high street, to promote multiple activity streams and a mix of uses, we help turn monocultures into resilient and vibrant town centres.
As architects, helping these different components speak to one another is the real challenge, strengthening the relationship between residents, schools, colleges, the high street, leisure uses and local businesses.
Reframing the opportunity for mutual benefit
When we began working on a new campus building for in Tamworth town centre, the initial brief was fairly conventional: a full sized refectory, as you would find on many further education campuses.
Over time, though, the brief evolved. Partly this came from an honest observation that students were likely to continue using places like Greggs and McDonald’s regardless of what we provided internally. Rather than resisting that reality, we started to see the opportunity within it. The daily movement of hundreds of students through the town centre was genuinely exciting to planners, stakeholders and funders because it represented consistent activity for the high street and the businesses around it.
From there, repositioning the refectory as an outward facing café at the front of the building increased the crossover between the college and the wider community. It is accessible from all sides and opens
directly onto the beautiful St Editha’s Square.
The same logic applied to the hair and beauty salon. Rather than existing purely as a student facility, it became a public facing service and a reason for people in the town to engage with the college, perhaps for the first time.
Town centre regeneration should create opportunities for interaction between different parts of the community. Recognising the underlying needs in Tamworth allowed us to encourage young people onto the high street while also providing local residents with new facilities directly off the square.
Writing the next chapter
Responding to context and grain can be interpreted in many ways. Every new building becomes one part of a town’s ongoing story, and its design should reflect the needs of that particular moment. In time, it simply becomes part of the fabric itself, just as the buildings we respond to today were once new.
Success cannot really be measured on opening day. It would be interesting to know whether application numbers rise over time, how public interaction develops during events, or whether businesses such as Greggs or McDonald’s experience increased activity following the opening of the college building. These are not always easy things to measure, but they feel like the right questions to ask because they reflect the wider health and momentum of the town centre itself.
Ultimately, every town already contains the answers. They exist in the desire lines, the heritage, the gaps, the grain and the patterns of everyday life. Read them carefully enough and our interventions are far more likely to succeed. Then, five or ten years later, the snowball is still rolling.