Curating main streets: toward a “toolkit” approach

Main streets, known as “high streets” in the UK, serve as critical nodes for daily services and social interaction, yet face pressures from e-commerce, retail gentrification, and shifting consumption patterns, leading to declining independent businesses and homogenized ground floor uses. Effective responses require tailored actions by public and private actors, but existing approaches often lack coordination tools. This paper introduces a toolkit to support the active curation of main streets: their deliberate, continuous management and governance by a network of actors. Drawing on interviews with key actors in Stockholm and international examples, the paper develops a diagnostic framework, the Five C’s, extended from previous work on on the Four C’s with a fifth added dimension, Character to capture cultural identity. The five dimensions, Connectivity, Catchment, Competition, Curation, and the added dimension Character, are assessed individually and interpreted collectively to identify needed intervention. The toolkit combines this framework with six categories of practical tools: form and design, use regulation, economic incentives, capacity building, organizational partnerships and experimental interventions. While grounded in Stockholm, the framework is transferable, helping practitioners and policymakers assemble locally appropriate tools into coherent strategies. By improving the viability of main streets for commerce and social life, they can thrive as dynamic spaces that counter decline.