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Most UK seaside towns lost out to cheap flights to Spain. There's very little reason anyone visit Blackpool over Málaga. For the price of a depressing hotel in
by cameronh90 3y ago
Most UK seaside towns lost out to cheap flights to Spain. There's very little reason anyone visit Blackpool over Málaga. For the price of a depressing hotel in Blackpool you can get a modern resort in Spain with warm seas and reliably sunny hot weather every day.
There are a few seaside towns that managed to hold on, such as Brighton. They're mostly in the South where the climate and sea temperature is a touch more bearable and you can feasibly go there on a day trip from London.
Arguably, what's happened to seaside towns in the UK is really just a more aggressive version of what's happened to all smaller towns in the UK. The UK economy has become more centralised, particularly in London but also in other major cities. Towns have little to offer the modern British economy, as the engines that kept their economies ticking over moved to China and India.
Basically, they are victims of globalisation, both in terms of easy travel and also free trade.
[Un]fortunately, the UK government keeps them just afloat by pumping tax money into them via welfare, pensions and healthcare spending. Which arguably prevents them from completely failing, but possibly reinventing themselves to be more useful and relevant to the modern economy.
- jdietrich 3y agoThere's a second-order problem related to their decline as tourist resorts. The B&Bs and hotels that were no longer viable as tourism businesses became cheap accommodation for the indigent. Perhaps inspired by happy childhood memories, a lot of people experiencing crisis decide to move to seaside towns and find a ready supply of cheap accommodation. The most severe deprivation in Blackpool is highly concentrated in a narrow strip just behind the seafront. The contrast is quite astonishing - Blackpool as a whole feels quite run down, but there are pockets that feel truly post-apocalyptic.
- helveticar 3y agoUK tourist towns were highly seasonal. No one wants to go to Blackpool in December. Providing accommodation for asylum seekers or whoever was year-round money with cost savings as those people's complaints could easily be ignored.
- Earw0rm 3y agoAccurate. An understated part of this is the hollowing out of the middle class in all small and midsize towns beyond commuting distance of the big cities, or not desirable enough to be a professionals' commuter base. When industry and commerce located its bureaucracy within towns, this provided a social backbone. The small factory owners, trucking business owners, bank branch managers, who together with clerics, family doctors and teachers made up an established middle-class. The women usually didn't work, and had time to maintain the social fabric. Most of this commercial, management, admin work now happens at regional, national or international level. Such professionals as there are are often on fairly short term rotations. If you're a young graduate, why on earth would you stick around..?
- ryandrake 3y agoIt seems odd from a US perspective, too. Here, it's much more expensive and desirable to live anywhere by the sea than it is to live inland. If you take two towns that are equal in all other ways, people would rather move to the seaside town. The existence of other seaside tourist destinations shouldn't change this. I (maybe obviously) know nothing about UK, but if there was a Blackpool-like town that's just like Blackpool, but inland, wouldn't that town be even less desirable?
- cameronh90 3y agoAll else being equal, sure. However these towns have collapsed. It's sort of like Detroit - any natural draw they have is overwhelmed by the fallout from how they collapsed. Just like Detroit, there are a new breed of hipsters, priced out of middle class areas, starting to gentrify some areas again, for example see somewhere like Margate. But it's a slow process...