Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ability of the centre to attract continuing
investment, not only to maintain the fabric, but
also to allow for improvement and adaptation to
changing needs' (URBED and Comedia 1994).
The British government has since issued a list of
indicators of vitality and viability, which local
planning authorities and other town centre
interests are expected to use in assessing the
possible impacts of retail development
(Department of the Environment 1996: Figure 2).
The method described in Figure 33.7 is typical
of those used by planning consultants in the UK
to investigate the probable impacts of proposed
new retail facilities. For the sake of simplicity, the
example taken is of a proposed large food store.
The ultimate aim of the exercise is to predict the
extent to which the proposed development will
affect the vitality and viability of a nearby
established town centre. Impacts upon other
modern large food stores in the local area can also
be assessed, but these are not usually held to be
significant for planning purposes. The method
clearly builds upon the principles of market area
analysis already discussed. This leads to a prediction
of trading impact: that the town centre will lose
x
per cent of its retail trade, for example. There is
then a further stage of assessing impacts upon
vitality and viability. This requires the exercise of
informed judgement rather than simple
application of some technical procedure.
This type of impact assessment clearly makes
use of geographical skills applied to a policy-
making environment. Ultimately, however, the
assessment is incomplete: it concentrates mainly
on economic impact and to a limited extent on
environmental impact. UK planning policy and
practice pay little attention to the social impact
of retail change, as one might expect in a
situation where the distributional effects of social
and economic change generally have no official
place in planning law and procedures. However,
this is an area where geographical research could
make a substantial impact. This theme is
developed further in the concluding section to
this chapter.
Another area of research that needs to be
applied more rigorously is the investigation of
retail impacts
after
the store or centre in question
has opened. The very extensive literature review
carried out by BDP Planning (1992) for the
Department of the Environment was able to
identify only a few competent and thorough
studies of retail impacts. More recently, the impacts
of regional shopping centres such as the Metro
Centre in Gateshead, Merry Hill in the West
Midlands and Meadowhall in Sheffield have been
investigated (Howard 1993; Howard and Davies
1993; Tym 1993; see Box 33.2). A study of long-
term changes in grocery store location and size in
Cardiff (Guy 1996b) suggested that trading impact
is difficult to identify in isolation from the many
other causes of retail growth and decline. In this
particular case, the development of a few large new
food stores coincided with the closure of several
smaller supermarkets and independently owned
food shops, but precise cause-and-effect sequences
were hard to detect. Changes in the spatial
provision of food shopping were better described
as the outcome of a general process of
Figure 33.7
Methodology for assessing the impacts of a
new large food store on town centre vitality and viability.
