From an Australian perspective the idea that "seaside" towns are especially susceptible to economic decay and being left behind seems quite odd - even in parts of country without year-round beach weather, coastal localities here are usually the desirable places to live with subsequently healthier economies. Are there other countries that have experienced similar patterns of development to the UK?
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.
There'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.
UK 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.
Accurate. 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..?
It 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?
All 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...
It's a whole lot warmer in Australia. Here in Britain there are very few days when it is pleasant to sit on the beach in Blackpool, let alone go swimming in the sewage-filled sea. Cheap flights make it easy to go abroad to the warmer and nicer environment of Italy or Spain.
Were seaside towns in the UK in the past particularly dependent on tourism though?
And has a similar phenomenon occurred in other cooler-climate countries, in Europe or elsewhere?
Tasmania's climate isn't so far off the UK's, yet I'm not aware of any hollowing-out effect among coastal towns there (Hobart has roughly the population of Blackpool, and was doing just fine last time I visited).
Hobart is the largest town on Tasmania, so presumably as well as tourism it is also a regional focus for industry and non-tourism services.
Blackpool is 25km from Preston (same size), a little further from Liverpool and Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield (all large cities). The industry and services are in the other cities.
Last time I was in London (early March, though many years ago) it was pretty bloody miserable too, but it seemed to be doing well enough despite that!
If any given day being well be suitable for hanging out at the beach is a gamble that would seem like an argument for choosing to live near it, where you can easily make spontaneous trips when the weather suits.
FWIW our most recent mini trip away was to a coastal town in Victoria in the middle of winter, where the weather was never going to be beach-suitable, other than for the dog (who loved it of course). And of course the die-hard surfers. But it was still a very pleasant getaway, with plenty to do and see, and several places we visited were booked out.
