Town centre retailing: forces impacting the vitality & viability Dr Les Dolega e-mail:...
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Transcript of Town centre retailing: forces impacting the vitality & viability Dr Les Dolega e-mail:...
Town centre retailing: Town centre retailing: forces impacting the vitality & viabilityforces impacting the vitality & viability
Dr Les Dolega e-mail: [email protected]
Forces shaping UK town centres performance
Response of UK retail centres to the economic crisis and austerity
Cross-regional empirical evidence
Intra-urban (local scale) evidence
Conceptualisation - resilience of British retail centres
Content
Competition from out-of-centre retail developments and adoption of ‘town centres first’ policies
Rapid expansion of online retailing
Economic crisis and austerity
Shifting consumer behaviour and progressive rise of ‘convenience culture’
Changing demographics
Forces shaping town centre performance
‘Free for all’ approach (Guy, 2007)
‘Town centres first’ – regulatory tightening
Prioritisation of UK town centres by PPG 6 Adoption of the ‘sequential test’
Promotion of the vitality & viability of town centres by PPS 6
‘Social inclusion’ and ‘urban regeneration’ agendas
Impact of retail planning policies
Source: Griffith and Harmgart, 2008
Effects of policy tightening on retail developments
Decrease in large retail developments
Adjustment of the major retailers to the planning regime
‘Policy friendly’ stores - located in/edge-of-town centre
Store formats flexibility
Retail-led urban regeneration
‘Food deserts’ and social inequality agendas
‘Mezzanine floor loophole’
Online sales reached 12% of total sales in the UK
Amazon - 8th biggest retailer in the UK
Major retailers transformed into ‘bricks & clicks’
Impact on traditional high streets
Progressive rise of online sales
Response of UK town centres to the economic crisis and
austerity
267 centres with retail composition surveys completed after the collapse of CCI - Oct 2008
119 in South West 31 in East Anglia 93 in North West 24 in West Yorkshire
Pre-crisis surveys completed in 2006 – 2007
Within-crisis surveys carried out either in Q4 2008 or 2009
Cross-regional analysis
Change in retail categories
Large increase in vacant retail:Relative change +28.2%Absolute change +2.7pp (increase from 10.4% to 13.1%)
Major contributors to closures: comparison retail (-5.3%)financial services (-3.2%)
Convenience retail more resilient Leisure services - positive growth
in all regions
Cross-regional study – descriptive results
Most fragile Department stores -29.5% Music, video and photography -26.5% Florists -12.1% Furniture shops -9.9% Booksellers -9.2% Gift and Toys -9.2%
Most resilientPhones & accessories +15.9%Household discounters +8.0%
As a result of filling vacant space:Charity shops +6.9%
Cross-regional study – change in comparison retail
Cross-regional study – change in convenience retail
Most fragile
Butchers & Fishmongers -8.2%
Greengrocers -7.9%
CTN & Off licences -7.1%
Most resilient
Convenience Stores: Multiple +42.2% Independent +25.2% Symbol Group +21.4% Grocers & delicatessen +5.6%
Modelling cross-regional change
in vacancy rate
Change in retail vacancy rates – response variable
Spatial variability in vacancy rate: up in 185 (69.3%) centres down in 61 (22.8%) centres unchanged in 21 (7.9%) centres
The average cross-regional increase in vacancy rate: +2.2pp for fixed boundaries +1.9pp for variable boundaries
Response Variable
Changes in Vacancy Rates have been filtered through two systems:
1. Regional economic system in which centres are located North–South divide Affluent catchments
2. Existing local economic structures
The mix and interdependencies of businesses (balance of retail vs. services, diversity and presence/entry of a corporate foodstores)
Local supportive/unsupportive institutional structures (car park charges, town centre manager, BIDs schemes or attracting key ‘magnet stores’)
Physical configuration of a centre (size, proportion of larger modern shops and level of ‘structural – harmful vacancy’)
Explanatory variables
Explanatory Variable Explanatory Variable Parameter Parameter estimate estimate
Standard Standard ErrorError
T-valueT-value
Constant
-0.076 0.019 -3.998**
South-North divide
-0.016 0.004 -4.170**
Centre size (Log)
0.013 0.002 5.743**
Retail diversity pre-crisis
-0.027 0.013 -2.139*
Corporate food store entry -0.008
0.004
-2.081*
Retail vs services % pre-crisis
0.095 0.021 4.463**
Structural vacancy pre-crisis 0.060 0.010 6.130**
Std Avg Store Size x Std magnet store floorspace
-0.349 0.082 -4.243**
Best supported model
**parameter estimate significant at 1%, * significant at 5%. R squared = 35.6% N = 259P-value for normality test of residuals =0.84Durbin-Watson d value = 2.17 Condition index value = 28.61
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Characteristics of resilient town centres
‘southern’ rather than ‘northern’ ‘smaller’ rather than ‘larger’ ‘diverse’ measured by higher proportions of independent stores experienced corporate foodstore entry (in/edge-of-centre) higher proportions of service relative to retail units in pre-crisis low levels of ‘structural vacancy’ in the pre-crisis period
physical structures are both relatively attractive and capable of re-configuration – proxied by the multiplicative variable
Published in E&PA (Oct 2011)
Attracted large interest in the UK and internationally
Nominated for the AESOP best published paper prize
Impact of the cross-regional study
Intra-urban study: Bristol
Intra-urban study design
47 retail centres in Bristol surveyed by Goad down to a shopping parade with 12 units
All centres surveyed in three different periods:
Pre-crisis (Jul 2006) Within-crisis (Oct 2008-Feb 2009) Austerity period (Feb-Mar 2012)
Main aimsValidate cross-regional results at local scaleModel the performance of UK retail centres during austerity
Main characteristics of
Bristol centres in pre-crisis 75% centres small - average
centre size 88 units High ratio of services (1.7)
relative to retail High diversity - independent
retailers 73%
Characteristics of Bristol centres
Cross-regional findings hold well at local scale
Four of seven explanatory variables retained the same, however: No North-South divide Corporate foodstore entry replaced with presence Income deprivation – significant variable Multiplicative variable insignificant
Explanatory Variable Explanatory Variable Parameter Parameter estimate estimate
Standard Standard ErrorError
T-valueT-value
Constant
-0.099 0.047 -2.124
Retail vs services % pre-crisis 0.168 0.069 2.428 Centre size (Ln)
0.020 0.008 2.415
Retail diversity pre-crisis -0.110 0.033 -3.321 Structural vacancy pre-crisis 0.098 0.028 3.506Corporate supermarket presence -0.039 0.017 -2.258Income deprivation 0.101 0.057 1.755R squared = 48.4% N = 47
Best supported model
Modelling of VRC between pre-crisis and within-crisis
Only three variables remained significant:
Proportion of retail vs. services
Diversity in pre-crisis
Presence of policy-compliant corporate foodstore
Significance of centre size, structural vacancy and income deprivation waned
Model of VRC between pre-crisis and austerity
Conceptualising our work
Intriguing question in economic geography – ‘why some regional economies manage to renew themselves,
whereas others remain locked in decline’? (Hassink, 2010)
Resilience of economic systems recently attracted wide-spread attention of social sciences
Resilience is defined as:‘the ability to recover form and position elastically following a
disturbance of some form’
Engineering resilience (physical science) – the resistance of a system to disturbances and the speed of return (bounce back) to its pre-shock state
Ecological resilience (biological science) - the scale of shock a system can absorb before it is destabilised and moved to another configuration (tipping point notion).
Adaptive resilience (complex system theory) – anticipatory or reactive reorganisation of the form and/or function of a system to minimise the impact of the external/internal shock
Three concepts of resilience (Martin, 2011)
Evolution of UK town centres affected by:
Unexpected shocks – economic crisis
‘Slow burns’ – competition from online and out-of-town retailers, changes in consumer culture
Adaptive resilience of town centres
Town centre adaptive resilience linked to:
pre-crisis position in adaptive cycles
knowledge and innovation of various actors
successful interventions across multiple scales
TheAdaptive
Cycle
Growth
INNOVATION & CREATIVITY HIGHNEW RETAIL UNITS OPEN UPHIGH RETAIL CHURN
RESILIENCE HIGH
Consolidation
PERIOD OF STABILITY LOW RETAIL CHURN SLOW RESPONSIVENESS TO CHANGEINCREASING RIGIDITY
RESILIENCE DECLINING
RESILIENCE LOW
Release
INCREASING VACANCY RATES/ SHOP CLOSURESECONOMIC OR COMPETITIVE SHOCK TRIGGERS CHANGE
RESILIENCE INCREASING
Reorientation
EMERGENCE OF INNOVATIONNEW INTERDEPENDENCIES AND SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIPSINSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT
Reconfigured town centres?
Reorientation may be: spontaneous or controlled
Four main drivers:Supportive institutional structuresKnowledge of actorsInnovation and creativityChanges in consumer culture
Emerging versions of reconfigured high streets:High growth BritainLow growth BritainEmergence of new interdependencies
Role of geo-demographics in predicting town centres performance and internet shopping patterns
E-resilience linked to an extent to which retail centres are exposed to consumers who heavily engage with ICT
Aims of the study: Estimation of conventional catchment areas for evolved retail centres Defining characteristics of e-resilient centres Measures of the engagement with ICT at small area level (LSOA)
E-resilience of town centres
Growth in UK Online Buyers, by Age 2013-2016 (% change)
2013 2014 2015 2016
15-24 3.5% 3.8% 3.5% 3.0%
25-34 4.1% 3.5% 2.8% 2.1%
35-44 1.5% 1.0% 0.8% 0.5%
45-54 4.3% 3.8% 3.1% 2.4%
55+ 6.5% 5.5% 5.0% 4.0%
Emergence of a new demographic group – the ‘digital generation'
Demographics of internet use Geography of online shopping e-commerce, m-commerce
Changing face of internet use and online shopping
Systematic evidence on cross-regional and intra-urban high street performance during economic crisis and austerity provided
First multiplicative modelling of drivers of that performance
Evidence on both diversity and corporate food store entry benefiting
the economic health of retail centres, despite being portrayed as
polar opposites
Conceptualisation of adaptive resilience of UK high streets
Exploring the relationship between the geo-demographics and e-resilience of town centres
Value added
Any questions?