What's happened to my local town centre?

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I work in a shopping centre in Chatham in Kent and it's a place I grew up going to as a kid. I remember one night going to bed once looking forward to going to town. Now there are very few shops there now. The top floor used to have shops upstairs and then one by one there closed even shops that had been there before I was born. D&A toys was a shop I used to sometimes buy toys from but luckily they haven't gone bust and have moved downstairs instead.

The upstairs shops have been replaced by offices that look nearly always empty and there is a new healthy living centre under construction and still hasn't been opened when it was supposed to. There seems to be leaks almost everywhere with buckets and warnings signs everywhere and I don't know if that's because the building is 50+ years old.

I nearly always hear that the roads are always full of potholes, the councils are all bankrupt, things aren't being run properly and so on. How did we get to situation like this? I don't remember before the pandemic hearing much of this stuff.

A part has sometimes thought about moving stores to another place maybe like Bluewater near London that has more shops there but because I've worked there for 9 years, I'm struggling to want to and a part of me doesn't want to.

Internet and Brexit. Don't vote Reform, it's just another Brexit trick, and everything will just become even more unaffordable. Internet shopping doesn't help matters either.

Similar things are happening to a mall that I like to go to. A lot of stores have closed down. I was unpleasantly surprised when I found out that Toys R Us was out of business.

The short answer: The consequences of neo-liberal policies.

More likely just an ageing demographic and online shopping.

Bricks and mortar are so last century

I don't doubt those factors are relevant too, but the overall consequences of the policies I'm blaming has been a hollowing out of society, which also plays a role.

There's no money left for maintenance of infrastructure, because the revenue isn't being collected (aka tax cuts) or is used for other purposes.

I've heard people saying we can't afford this, we can't afford that. I mean isn't the UK supposed to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world? I don't know how we have come this way. Is it because of the COVID pandemic or was it going on even before 2019 or 2020 ? I do know we had a recession going back to 2008 and so I don't know it's gradually got worse and things are less affordable since then.

There is a mall in Connecticut called West Farms that is doing really well.
They have stores that cater to the upper middle class and wealthy people.
They got rid of stores that average folks would shop at many years ago and replaced them with luxury brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, and Burberry.

Here's an accuracy of what my high street looks like. Funny, but not funny really.

Intentional destruction of the middle class ,Across the Western countries.and allied countriesNew World order, "Don't cha know .". best move to a more profitable area,if you can afford it. . If you in the business , best add some extra bling to your display presentations .And figure out a youtube scheme, that might seem like things your business has, has gone viral ..? Some kinda marketing gimmick .

GREGGS sells baked goods.

They may have production jobs that require minimal social interaction if you can work an early morning shift.

I'm from Stoke and it's basically England's answer to Detroit. It's so sad tbh I remember the city centre being a bustling hub when I was a teenager. High streets are a dying concept.

I feel the exact same about my home town Sutton Coldfield (in North Birmingham), back in the 90s is seemed to be bustling with lots of big department stores like BhS, Woolworths, M&S, now all those are long gone and even the library has closed, with the only shop that seems to be busy is the Greggs just like in the previous poster's image, it's all very depressing.

The high street is being hit from both sides. There's online shopping, yes, but there's also the fact that for the past 15 years, central government has forced councils to raise revenue by constantly raising business rates. So, not only are high street shops losing customers to Amazon and Temu, their running costs have become completely unsustainable. Everyone blames the councils for this, but their hands are tied. Pretty much all a council is allowed to do these days is to rubber-stamp the austerity measures dictated from Westminster. And they wonder why everyone in the country is frustrated and angry.