Kelly Van Homrigh - The High Street Model

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THE HIGH STREET MODEL Kelly Van Homrigh

The Rebuilding of London Act 1666 (18 & 19 C. II. c.7.) An Act for the Rebuilding of the City of London

VI. Lord Mayor, &c. to declare the Streets and Lanes

[1. ‌be it further enacted, That the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the said City shall declare which and how many shall hereafter be accounted and taken to be By-lanes, which and how many shall

hereafter be deemed Streets or Lanes of Note, and high and principal Streets, by Act of Common Council to be passed for that Purpose: to the End the Breadth, Length and Extent thereof may be the better known and observed.]

And through the fine art of regulation, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer so birthed the High Street. It was a model of extreme sensibility, yet still idealistic enough in its ambition to excite the Lord Mayor and his Alderman. For the act, it must be noted, proves that the High Street was not a model that manifested merely from the back and forth of the market place as the story so often told, but that it was invented, planned and even regulated all before the first stone laid. But let me not mislead you, for the High Street is still a place of commerce, and commerce does not do static. Thus it would be naive for us to assume that the Common Council of 1667 wrote the whole story of the High Street just as Thomas More did Utopia, when rather they laid the foundation for the 400 year long battle of wit between regulation (RE) and the free

market (FM). A game of which we have so obsessed over the apparent roles of protagonist and antagonist that marked changes on the board have been lost to us. Let this essay examine the rules, analysis the strategy and determine the winner.


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