Shifting prime retailing pitches. A GIS analysis of the spatial adaptations in city centre retail markets

In this paper, the density and location of retail properties located within the primary retailing areas of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool and Nottingham are investigated over a 17 year period. The study is novel due to the original spatial databases developed and unique combination of established methods employed to explore spatial change within these northern UK cities. The paper starts from the premise that retailing markets display adaptive resilience where adaptations in use and variation in retail clustering will occur in response to endogenous and exogenous shocks that disturb the market’s agglomerative and competitive effects. The results suggest that significant new retail-led developments have intra-urban spatial outcomes that impact on the size and location of prime and secondary retailing pitches. In urban retailing centres where there have been no substantive supply disruptions, disturbances in the socio-economic environment can create contractions at the peripheral edges of the prime retailing pitch. This study is significant in providing a historical perspective of the micro-level effects of new development, changing customer shopping habits and shifting retailer location preferences. In addition, the research develops replicable and robust methods that can be employed to examine and monitor spatial change in urban centres. Understanding these dynamic micro-spatial effects are important for the future management of urban centres.