Stockton has been well ahead of the game when it comes to developing a town centre people want to spend time in for reasons other than just shopping, as Neil Schneider explains

The high street landscape has irrevocably changed and there is no point clinging on to a sentimental vision of the past – we have to start planning for a bold new world. Not my words, but those of straight-talking retail expert, Bill Grimsey. They are from the foreword of his first review of the future of the nation's high streets, published just over five years ago. If they sounded radical then, they sound almost prophetic now.