Investment in the public realm is a further major challenge for London’s West End retail district. The responses from the location surveys saw it rank ahead of Paris and Milan in regards the overall quality of its facilities and amenities, albeit scored far behind the other Global Cities (see Figure 13).

^{Source: The Retail Group}

This is largely due to its lower rated public realm features including pedestrian walkways, rubbish collection, WiFi, seating and public toilets. This relative underperformance is even more pronounced when compared against the top three facility and amenity scoring cities of Dubai, New York and Hong Kong although its public transport accessibility and street lighting is rated highly (see Figure 14).

^{Source: The Retail Group}

London’s West End’s lower score relative to Dubai and Hong Kong is understandable in the sense that shopping in these cities is focused on shopping centres, where the provision of facilities and amenities as part of the public realm would have been designed in ahead of development.

The fact that shopping centres tend to be under single ownership also means that it is far easier to implement improvements. Considering that New York achieved a higher score despite it having a very similar retail environment to London suggests there may be lessons to be learned from how the city manages its public realm.

However, The Retail Group has partially attributed New York’s high score to a certain level of cultural over-optimism. New West End Company was formally instated as a Property Owner Business Improvement District (BID), combining the interests of the multiple property owners in the West End’s retail district. This will help with the provision of new facilities and an improved public realm such as the £11m Bond Street Development Plan (see image).

^{▲ CGI’s courtesy of Publica – Burlington Square, Bond Street, before and after}

Public realm issues were also identified when survey respondents were asked to rate how problematic certain features were in London’s West End, with pavement condition and litter highlighted as major problems by 14.0% and 13.5% of West End respondents respectively. In contrast, no Hong Kong respondents noted pavement condition as a major problem with 9.5% doing so in the New York surveys.

While there are clear challenges facing the West End’s retail environment, investment in the public realm will mitigate some of these thereby improving the retail experience for international and domestic shoppers, thus enhancing retail spend and in turn the London’s West End’s global ranking.