More than half of the shops are retail chains with stupidly bright colors that clash with the local architecture. The other half is cheap-looking stores and bad restaurants.

To illustrate my point, I picked a random town center on google maps:

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.5494903,0.0881482,5a,55.8y,2...

This has a costa coffee, a subway, a ladbroke, a betfred, a bright vape shop, a haart real estate agency, a bunch of hair salons, etc.

To be fair, this town has also a number of local shops that look decent. But overall the aesthetics of it is highly depressing to me.

But look at the triovet clinic, this is a local place that wants to look like a national chain.