In order to survive, modern retail and civic centres have one thing in common: the need for social functions and communal activities. Shopping City, Runcorn, 1972, was envisaged as more than a shopping centre: a hermetically sealed, air-conditioned ’town centre’ with an internal ’town square'. Multi-Story looks to turn the barrier-like northeast car park into an outward-facing entrance point for pedestrians, while reintroducing to the retail-heavy ‘town centre’ a mix of much needed social functions: from markets, food & drink and community facilities to a diverse Youth Zone providing 21st century youth services such as sports pitches, music practice rooms, craft rooms, table tennis, climbing walls etc. It uses the the robust existing car park as a framework for social infrastructure, allowing for a bottom-up and organic process of design and construction over time, while borrowing from the language of roads and highways to create an informal and strangely familiar new public space for Runcorn.