Take Me to the Centre of Your Town! Using Micro-geographical Data to Identify Town Centres

Tracking a city’s center of gravity over 500 years of growth from a time series of georectified historical maps

“…Although Southampton is strictly a polycentric city (neighboring villages with their own centers being absorbed as it grew), the range of goods and services available in the main city center far outweigh those in its district centers. Indeed, centrally-focused regeneration was used as a deliberate strategy to increase the footfall in Southampton's city center (Lowe, 2005a(Lowe, , 2005b(Lowe, , 2007, reflecting the "Town Center First Policy" adopted in 1996 (Cheshire et al, 2018). Concern over the economic viability of city centers arose partly as a result of significant pressures from out-of-town retail centers, online retailing and the evolution of the "convenience culture" (Wrigley & Lambiri, 2014).…”

“…Southampton's historic city center thus remains the focus of commercial and social activity and today's Southampton behaves much as a monocentric city. Ironically, the Town Center First Policy was partly motivated by a desire to reduce carbon footprints (Cheshire et al, 2018). Yet debate on whether monocentric or polycentric cities necessitate greater commuting distances has not reached consensus (Li et al 2018) with some work suggesting that a single city center increases territorial carbon footprints (Makido et al, 2012).…”

“…Even in the present day, it is surprisingly difficult to define what is meant by a city or town center and precisely where it lies (Cheshire et al, 2018). There is no universal consensus on its definition and its spatial boundaries remain vague due to subjective judgment (Hollenstein & Purves, 2010;Lüscher & Weibel, 2013;Montello et al, 2003;Saraiva & Pinho, 2015;Thurstain-Goodwin & Unwin, 2000;Zhong et al, 2013).…”

“…Others have used public transportation smart card data (Roth et al, 2011;Zhong et al, 2013Zhong et al, , 2014 and a centrality index (CI) based on the concept of central place theory (CPT) (Zhong et al, 2014) to identify the spatial structure of cities and human activity patterns (Roth et al, 2011). More recently, Cheshire et al (2018) have shown that town centers may be defined systematically across the whole of Britain using multiple sources of micro-geographic data. Unfortunately, none of these approaches is applicable across a wide span of years because, clearly, no photographs, business data or public opinions are widely available for the early years.…”

“…This changing spatial-temporal dynamic is important because the spatial structure of a city has a pivotal role in influencing people's movements, and in determining the dimensions of sustainability and sustainable urban development, for example, in terms of economic growth and promotion of social and environmental equity (Anas et al, 1998;Zhong et al, 2014). As Cheshire et al (2018) point out, urban policies are often aimed at ill-defined town centers in order to strengthen retail centers, to adjust shoppers' travel patterns and to reduce their carbon footprints. Yet as we emphasize here, the historical development of a city may constrain presentday options for change.…”