Krystian Heffner (p)

Özge Öner

Small towns as local centres in the rural areas so far fulfilling housing functions (commuting) but local trade and services are systematically losing importance. “Outflow” of central functions results in increasing peripherality of small towns. They’re dominated by housing and locally served by one or two discount stores usually located in accessible nearby road network nodes and convenient “greenfield” location (large parking lot). The changes take place both in the spatial structure (architecture, communications, spatial development) as well as in social and economic. The main change is connected to disappearance of traditional economic bases of small towns. Changes in retail go along with evolution in consumer behavior and consumer mobility for services, including retail.
Important for urban structural change is the locational change in retailing. The retail institutional change is also important for location, existence and functioning of retailers and stores in urban space as well as in small town centres. Other aspects of store location seen as being of most importance are that of accessibility. In many towns and cities, both larger and smaller, retail and commerce was shifted outward. Consequently, in the city centres conditions for retailers and services have changed completely, especially in the cities and towns of Central Europe, where the availability of parking and public transport is limited.
The answer to the question: What is the future of the traditional trade and retail in the cities and small towns? Is it very actual because the question of survival of retail facilities in a competitive and dynamic urban structure has been discussed less.
Especially important is the adjustment of traditional urban centre retail function, disappears and depreciates at a fast pace resulting in numerous deserted main streets and pedestrian areas. The success of the urban commerce is seen as sign of urban vitality and good urban policy provided by the key local institutions. The status of retail and commerce show the position of the town in the hierarchy of settlement system and to give each place of town its own special character, in particular the physical appearance of the high streets and types of retailing (e.g. corner shops, market halls, department stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, shopping malls). Important is the answer to the question why exactly such a set of retail stores and services get together in some towns and how it is change over the long run.

Helena Nilsson (p)

Krystian Heffner

Creating car-free zones, also known as pedestrianization, is commonly used to improve the environment in urban areas for both residents and visitors. However, the temporal effects of pedestrianization on economic activities that rely on proximity to consumers have not been studied. In this paper we assess the effects of pedestrianization on the size of local retail and hospitality in the 50 largest Swedish cities between 2011 and 2019. We use data on the location and year of an increase in pedestrianized street length and connect this to financial data for retail and hospitality sectors in the area. The results show that an increase in pedestrianized street length decreases employment of the local retail sector while it has no effect on net turnover or on firms in the hospitality sector. Further analysis indicates that the decline in retail is may be partly driven by a decline in the number of firms.

Özge Öner (p), Viroj Jienwatcharamongkhol, Johan P Larsson

Helena Nilsson

We analyze the patterns of retail cluster formation in an exogenously assigned grid of 1 km2 neighborhoods in Sweden. A neighborhood’s increases and decreases of different store types is modelled as a function of changes in the previous year, as well as of several other local market attributes. The dynamic empirical design we use allows us to document a pattern of retail cluster formation by looking at what type of shops attract or repel each other in space. We also explore heterogenous effects for metropolitan areas, as well as for urban core and periphery, with one strikingly common finding: we find a Hotelling type co-location dynamics for all retail categories in the analysis, i.e. that similar stores have attracted similar stores over the period.