Beyond retail: New ways of classifying UK shopping and consumption spaces

Abstract

Early attempts to classify shopping activity often took a relatively simple approach, largely driven by the lack of reliable data beyond fascia name and retail outlet counts by centre. There seems to be a consensus amongst contemporary scholars, commercial research consultancies and retailers that more comprehensive classifications would generate better-informed debate on changes in the urban economic landscape, as well as providing the basis for a more effective comparison of retail centres across time and space, particularly given the availability of new data sources and techniques and in the context of the transformational changes presently affecting the retail sector. This paper seeks to demonstrate the interrelationship between supply and demand for retailing services by integrating newly available data sources within a rigorously specified classification methodology. This in turn provides new insight into the multidimensional and dynamic taxonomy of consumption spaces within Great Britain. First, such a contribution is significant in that it moves debate within the literature past simple linear scaling of retail centre function to a more nuanced understanding of multiple functional forms; and second, in that it provides a nationally comparative and dynamic framework through which the evolution of retail structures can be evaluated. Using non-hierarchical clustering techniques, the results are presented in the form of a two-tier classification with 5 distinctive 'coarse' clusters and 15 more detailed and nested subclusters. The paper concludes that more nuanced and dynamic classifications of this kind can help deliver more effective insights into changing role of retailing and consumer services in urban areas across space and through time and will have implications for a variety of stakeholders.

Footfall signatures and volumes: Towards a classification of UK centres

“…Rather than making assumptions about potential numbers of visitors based on catchment, or assessing 'attractiveness' according to the retail offer, counting footfall tells us how many people are actually using a place. As footfall has been cited as the 'lifeblood' of a town centre's vitality and viability (Birkin et al, 2017;Dolega et al, 2019), our first contribution is to propose footfall as a universal measure of activity, that provides a means of classifying place based on the patterns and volumes of usage.…”

“…Thus, there is a need to develop a more nuanced understanding of how cities and towns operate beyond retail, by challenging the collapsed retail hierarchy (Jones, 2017) and moving towards a holistic, data-driven approach to town/city classifications. In this vein, Dolega et al (2019) argue for a non-hierarchical classification of consumption spaces that highlights the dynamic nature and the hybridity of town centres, by using non-commercial socioeconomic data along with retail occupancy and diversity indicators. Nevertheless, as the authors argue, there is still a need to incorporate and understand new forms of data on a microlevel, such as footfall dynamics, in order to enhance the quality of town/city classification.…”

“…One of these measures is footfall, or pedestrian counting, which refers to 'the number of people walking up and down a given town centre (or single street) regardless of their reasons for doing so' (Coca-Stefaniak, 2013:24), and this is recognised in policy and planning use as a key indicator of town centre vitality and viability (DoE, 1996). As places are inherently dynamic in nature (Dolega et al, 2019), footfall provides a means to analyse dynamic patterns of behaviour and levels of activity within the urban grid.…”

Unravelling material/digital shopping space: An assemblage approach

“…However, the study of the changes of material shopping space stimulated by online retailing is at an early stage. There is, in particular, a lack of a typology for contemporary shopping centres (Dolega, Reynolds, Singleton, & Pavlis, 2019). The current four major retail typologies are by scale, morphology, retail offer, and control, respectively; they are biased towards brick‐and‐mortar retailing (DeLisle, 2009; Gibbs, 2012; Guy, 1998).…”

Planning for Sustainability: Lessons from Studying Neighbourhood Shopping Areas

“…They serve local residential communities, lying below the level of district, town or city centres as set out within the retail hierarchy (as detailed, for example, in Planning Policy Statement 4, 2010: 25; here they are specified as containing sub-post offices, pharmacies and launderettes but not supermarkets, banks and libraries). In a recent analysis of shopping and consumption spaces, Dolega et al (2019) describe them as 'local retail and service centres', a distinctive category contrasted with retail parks, comparison shopping destinations, and traditional high streets and market towns. Within London alone, it has been estimated that there are 1,200 neighbourhood and local centres (London Assembly, 2010), but such areas are a feature of almost all cities, worldwide.…”