Retailing
Central Business Districts
Up until WWII, retailing was an important part of the CBD. Downtown was the
best, and sometimes only, place to find specialty shops and department stores.
But with suburbanization, massive increases in automobile ownership, and the
resulting decentralization, retailing shifted to the suburbs and the outer areas of
cities.
CBD’s have different functions, including:
o Control Centres – for administrative, finance, corporate and
business functions,
o Hotels – with growth in the past 25 years helping offset losses in
other sectors. With business travellers, conventions, luxury travel,
and tourism.
o Entertainment & Sports – theatres, concerts, symphonies…
Most retailing began congregating in downtown areas at the beginning of the
century. But with the growth in population, greater mobility, increases in personal
income and changes in transportation retailing has become more peripheral and
diffused.
The CBD’s history can be divided into three periods:
o CBD Dominance (1850s – 1950s), began with improvements to
mechanized transportation and the invention of the department
store. Was now possible to operate in a central location, and other
retailing clustered around.
o CBD Decline (1950s – 1970s), the share of retailing in downtowns
has kept dropping and retailing is now much more dispersed, with
many clusters of retail development throughout the city rather than
in one main location.
o CBD Replacement (1970s – to the present), city leaders
responding to the decline in retailing in different ways, depending
on the city.
Attempts to bring retailing and visitors to downtown include:
o Downtown Malls (eg. Pacific Centre) – with varying success, they
do draw people but often this does not improve business in the
downtown, it just draws people to the mall.
o Pedestrian Malls (eg. Granville Mall) – banning or restricting
vehicular traffic from an existing area within a city. These also have
mixed results, though there are successful examples. These were
most popular in the 1970s, and a few are built today. Banning traffic
has been done successfully in Europe, some American cities, and
in Mexico.
Declines in retailing in the downtown were sometimes offset by increases in the
office industry. The CBD offers accessibility to people, workers, services,
transportation…and complimentary linkages are developed between financial
institutions, legal firms, insurance companies, and corporate headquarters. Being
downtown is a place of prestige.
Downtown Retailing is not dead, however, since:
o City centres retain advantages for specialty shopping
o The CBD has concentrations of people working, using government
facilities, and drawn to entertainment and cultural facilities that the
central city supports,
o City centres play important roles in tourism and convention
functions,
o Gentrification has created some high end demand for retailing, and
de-industrialization has made land available for re-development into
festival shopping districts.
Urban Retail Structures:
We can classify urban commercial structures into three types:
o Centres: these are the main shopping areas of the city, they vary in
size and importance, with some low on the hierarchy, such as
convenience stores up to very specialized retail clusters.
o Ribbons: collections of unplanned retail units that develop along
highway corridors due to the good automobile access they offer.
These include gas stations, fast-food restaurants and functions that
require a lot of space such as home supply stores, mobile home
sales, furniture stores etc.
o Specialized Areas: clustered, unplanned areas that develop as a
result of mutual attraction. These can include theatres, restaurants
and bars forming an entertainment zone, or an automobile row with
a concentration of garages and auto dealers.
There can be some overlap in these functions, some retailers will be represented
in several of these locations.
There is also a hierarchy within retail space, for different functions have different
thresholds and minimum trade areas.
They require different numbers of customers to be viable.
Customers also demand various goods at different frequencies.
Low threshold, high frequency items include items found at most local retail
clusters, including bread, milk, gasoline…
High-threshold, low frequency items occur only at high level clusters with large
trading areas.
There are therefore many more low order retail clusters than high order.
Consumers will only travel short distances for bread or milk but for appliances or
diamond rings, they will travel farther.
Types of Retailing
Department Stores: began in the 1850s, drawing customers from throughout the
city. Initially they were located in downtown cores, but they followed people into
the suburbs and became the anchors for shopping malls.
The First Shopping Centre:
1907, Roland Park in Baltimore, with several stores in
the same building with parking in front.
1931, Highland Park in Dallas, the first planned
centre, with unified management. Today these are called strip malls, this one is
still popular.
These early malls did not include major department stores, for these were still
located in downtowns. It was not until the 1950s that malls turned inward from
the street and became large enough to be anchored by department stores
There has been little change to the design or function of malls since these
designs in the 1950s.
Scales of shopping
Convenience Store: lowest end of the hierarchy, isolated grocery or drugstore,
or a pub. Provides convenience goods for the immediate neighbours, not as
common as it once was, for it served pedestrians, most people now drive to
larger centres.
Neighbourhood Centre: low order goods and services. Serves a population of
7,000 to 15,000. It provides daily needs such as food, drugs, liquor and personal
services such as hair cuts, dry cleaners… This is the most common type of
centre. These are often anchored by a supermarket or superstore and located
near a major highway. They occur in communities of all sizes and may be the
only shopping centre present in a community.
Community Centre: Same functions as a neighbourhood but with more
specialized goods and services. It serves 30,00 to 50,000 people. These can be
anchored by supermarkets or junior department stores, they have fast food
outlets and restaurants.
Regional Shopping Centre: Often located in smaller centres as the only mall, or
in larger cities as one of a few. They will include at least one major department
store, and have clothing, shoe stores, jewellery stores, food courts. These are
higher order than community or neighbourhood malls and have much larger trade
areas. There is little competition between centres, and they will therefore reflect
the retail tastes of its customers.
Superregional Centres: All the things found at the regional mall but with more
specialty stores, more department stores and with more duplication of goods and
services. It will also include entertainment facilities. These have large trade areas
and may serve up to 250,000 people.
Growth of Suburban Shopping Centres in North America
Occurred in Four Development Phases:
o Consequent Development (1950s) – shopping mall built after the
housing. Usually small and designed to serve the needs of a single
residential community.
o Simultaneous Development (1960s) – shopping plaza and
housing built at the same time, with the planned centre designed to
be the focus for the community. Department stores began to anchor
these developments.
o Catalytic Shopping Centre (1970s) – large malls used as growth
poles to stimulate future residential developments. Superregional
malls built on greenspace at the intersection of highways preceding
development by 3 to 5 years.
o Shopping Mall as Tourist Attraction/Entertainment (1980s) –
West Edmonton Mall, Mall of America.
The Changing Structure of Urban Retailing
Forces driving urban retail changes include
Demand Side changes:
o Changes in residential location – the most important factor
underlying change during the post-war era. Younger, richer and
more mobile people move to the suburbs, leaving older, poorer and
less mobile people in the inner cities. This remaining population
does not have the income to support many shopping facilities, and
are therefore left with little choice. This pattern is most common in
US cities, though also in Canada to a lesser extent.
o Changing consumer attitudes and expectations – demanding more
convenience and comfort in shopping with lots of parking.
o Growth in female employment – with increased purchasing power
from two incomes, and with time limits placed on shopping, with
less free time for multiple trips.
o Changing levels of purchasing power – rises in levels of
consumption expanding retailing post-war, and occasional
economic slumps that affect consumer spending and increasing
competition between retailers attracting fewer customers.
o Increased Mobility – car ownership leading to fewer trips, and bulk
buying.
Supply Side changes:
o Structural Change – expansion of multiple retailers at the expense
of independent shopkeepers. Declining profit margins leading to
self-service establishments. And overall declines in the numbers of
shops.
o New Technology – bar-coding and electronic terminals, but with
high capital costs, bringing benefits to large retailers and making
them harder to compete with.
These forces do vary, though, from country to country. Without strong planning,
American developments are built wherever the market allows. In Canada, and
most of Western Europe, planners and municipal governments keep more
control, though these forces are active and still market driven.