Cambridge, famous for its brilliant students, college towers and grassy meadows, is bottom of the class in Britain when it comes to the diversity of its high street stores, a think tank said.
The ancient university city is the worst "clone town" in Britain, with its historic streets dominated by national chain stores, said the New Economics Foundation (NEF), which promotes sustainable development.
Its researchers found that the city, in the east of England, had only nine varieties of shop along its main high street, the lowest of the 117 city and town centres surveyed.
"A bland homogeneity and encroaching vacant premises characterise the city's shopping centre," the NEF said in a report.
The city scored just 11.6 out of 100 in the survey's high street diversity index. Whitstable, a seaside town in southeast England, was praised as having the greatest variety of shops and independent stores, with a score of 92.1.
The NEF said Cambridge, despite its huge attraction for tourists, was the worst example of the trend for British high streets to look identical, all populated by the same small selection of major retailers.
It blamed the colleges of Cambridge University, as the city's most important landlords, for pushing up rents and driving out smaller, independent stores.
"Cambridge is a small historic city with narrow medieval lanes and great chunks of it have been turned into shopping malls," said Vanessa Burkitt, who runs a family jewellers in the city and is chair of a pressure group of 100 independent shops.
"The size of the units in shopping malls and the rents charged are way beyond the means of small independent retailers," she added.
Cambridge city authorities said the survey was flawed as the NEF had asked its researchers to focus only on high street stores.
"Cambridge simply doesn't have one main high street," said the city council's tourist chief, Emma Thornton.
"What makes Cambridge unique is that we have over 21 individual shopping areas, all interconnected and of equal importance."
Despite the presence of major chain stores like John Lewis, WH Smith and BHS, she said the city had a "massive selection" of independent retailers.
"The historic streets which come off the main centre are full of shops you wouldn't find anywhere else in the world." - Reuters