HAVING chronicled the generally negative brand attributes of Northern towns in the second blog, this next part of the series reviews some of the key features of iconic towns across the UK and Europe to see if there are any commonalities and ideas worth copying.

How do the brand attributes of Europe’s most iconic towns differ from Rochdale or Rotherham? Carefully avoiding cities which generally have different investment patterns to smaller towns, the following might be considered part of Europe’s cherished townscapes: Shrewsbury, Harrogate, Durham, Falmouth, Llandudno, St Malo, Lugano, Montreux, Annecy and Odense.

Of these, only Harrogate has no obvious water feature, although it is a spa town of international standing. All the others enjoy the favoured attribute of river, lake or sea plus have fabulous buildings which are all generally free of grime and are well maintained. As tourist destinations, their councils do not seem to tolerate rundown properties; why should they, it’s bad for their image? Similarly, none have much in the way of high-rise buildings; two or three storeys maximum is typical.

Interesting from a retail perspective, is that not one town mentioned is overrun with larger stores, their prevailing architectural styles do not easily facilitate megastore development. In contrast, these towns exhibit a wide range of distinctive and differentiated small shops, selling products predominantly targeted towards affluent consumers or tourists.

From a social and cultural viewpoint, what is striking in all of these towns is the complete lack of pub concentration or the existence of what are, in effect, super pubs or large drinking taverns. For whilst Shrewsbury, Falmouth and the other great British towns have some amazing pubs and inns, they are not concentrated in small area as, say, in Bolton or Wigan.

Of course pubs are a truly idiosyncratic feature of the British Isles, whilst the Continent has very few.

Another noticeable feature is that restaurants and cafes far outnumber the availability of bars or pubs. All the mentioned towns have either only one or no large drinking taverns and lots of small restaurants, bistros or cafes.

Many restaurants will be in small back alleys or lanes, locations not normally used in northern towns like Rotherham or Rochdale. That’s because the backs of most northern town centre properties are seriously rundown, hideous carbuncles of add-ons and extensions, and usually dangerous places for the public to go!

Finally, it is common, unlike in northern towns, for people to live in the town centre, more so in Europe. Shop owners and many others live in the multitude of apartments above the ground floor, and will naturally mingle with visitors to the town on an evening. This can create a marvellous buzz to the town, especially at weekends and summer holidays.

MIKE Phillips, managing director of Purepages Group in Church Bank, Bolton, is an ex-director of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and KPMG.

Company projects include a global healthcare and medical marketing system medicourse.com with comprehensive and detailed UK career profiles medicourse.com/careers