Have yourself a dreary little Christmas

"Shops are the architectural interface of the city with the street," observes Edwin Heathcote in the Financial Times. And, says the newspaper's architecture critic,  the Christmas shopping season reveals that Britain's high streets have turned into "a landscape of aesthetic and social dysfunction."

In an essay comparing current shopping conditions to those of Christmases past, Heathcote examines both the changing nature of the shop window and the changing composition of British retailing.  

"Walking back from the station in prosperous Putney, not a single shop had an eye-catching Christmas display, only garishly printed banners displaying the latest offers and promotions," Heathcote says of a trip on foot through his own section of London. "If the future of the west is pure consumerism, how can it possibly be so little fun?"

A few Americans have had the same thought. There are many similarities between retail trends in the US and in the UK. Roughly 2,000 independent shops are disappearing from Britain's high streets each year, Heathcote reports.

In graceful prose, he focuses on the things that used to give a good shopping street its satisfying atmosphere—things now often lost. One of those is small, independent shops. Another is relatively elaborate windows that are "like proscenium arches to theatrical worlds of temptation." 

A photo accompanying the article shows Heathcote holding several shopping bags as he walks past the festively decorated, dark-wood-framed shop windows of London's Burlington Arcade. It's an elegant sight. Alas, the owners want to get rid of the small retailers who have given the arcade its character.

Heathcote has perceptive things to say about what's at stake. At this time of year, especially, there's a longing for streets that "provoke desire" and that cause us to "see the city anew as a place that is alive...."