Retail planning and urban resilience – An introduction to the special issue

Globalization of retailing, dominantly through transnational corporations and foreign direct investment, follows various trajectories at different levels and scales that lead to salient changes in the structure and organization of retail businesses in host countries (Coe & Wrigley, 2007). The literature on the internationalization of retailing in emerging and less-developed markets mostly focuses on the economic aspects and impacts on local retailers. Resilience strategies of local and domestic retailers and traditional retail districts are one such aspect under investigation, yet their spatial imprints and links with urban planning are overlooked. These factors must be understood to achieve a more thorough analysis of the impacts of retail globalization. This need, pointed out by researchers in the field, is the major motive for this special issue. Retail is an open system operated by several actors who have gone through periods of intense innovation and change followed by periods of reaction and adaptation. Recent changes in retail and in the relations between cities and retailing challenge urban sustainability because they affect the vitality and viability of traditional shopping areas. An increasing number of consumers have become car-dependent, a process that marginalizes some consumer groups (the less mobile, the elderly, and the disabled), reduces social cohesion and leads to a socially unsustainable urban life, as Bromley and Thomas (1993, 1995) and Guy (2007) have shown. Some (Gardner & Sheppard, 1989; Messerlin, 1982) call the important changes that have occurred in urban retail in the last decades a ‘retail revolution’, which is essentially associated with large-scale stores mostly located outside the city center. With the rise of the consumer society, a higher diversification in terms of all types of stores’ formats and location patterns has been observed. This change in the urban retail structure is reflected in a decline of downtown/high street functions, simplification of the intra-urban hierarchy through the decline or disappearance of many shops at convenience and neighborhood levels and the rise of new retail poles in peripheral locations. The closure of nearby shops is responsible for the greater distances people must travel to buy even convenience goods. Large retail premises located outside the city center, on the suburban ring or even further away play a pivotal role in the urban model based on diffuse city regions. Thanks to the globalization of real estate investments and retail corporations promoting specific stores of the same brands (hypermarkets and other chain stores, franchised outlets) shopping centers have been dominating the retail scene (Barata-Salgueiro, 1996, 1999; Erkip, 2003, 2005) in many cities around the world. They have introduced salient transformations in the retail landscape and consumer behaviors. Changes in consumption values and the role of images to compose people and place identities explain the establishment of new relationships between consumers