The perfect parade of shops in Harlesden, circa 1900. And how it is today. I’ve been thinking about what we’ve lost from our high streets, our local communities and why we often choose to shop online. Here’s a thread but I really want to hear what you all think and feel about it.

To breathe life back into local high streets, councils must place a higher value on how they look, how they invite us to walk, linger and spend money. Art critic Ruskin talked about the ‘bounding line’, the continuation of an edge that the eye follows on the entire structure.

How come it’s been ok for decades now to cover our retail streets in satellite dishes, cables and plastic panels? Signage that bares no relationship visually with the building it sits on? Who wants to linger here?

It’s too easy to look at old images and get into a fixed mindset that the past was better. But where we have a surviving retail architecture that is Victorian or Edwardian, we could preserve and recapture what worked well.

Why not bring back awnings. They’re practical, protect us from bright sun and bad weather, encourage us to stop and stare at shop windows and the window frames on most Victorian shop fronts are designed for them - not for huge plasticised panels.

Bring back the feeling of connection and balance that used to exist in the design between mixed retail and residential buildings. Nowadays, too often it’s like two neighbours that won’t talk to each other.