Effect of Transportation on the Decline of City Commercial Center in Competition with Large Sub Urban Shopping Center

The influence of large sub urban shopping center toward the decline of inner city commercial center has attracted many researchers. To prevent the decline of the city center due to urban sprawl, it is necessary to understand the influence of sub urban shopping mall development in competition with the city commercial center. This paper reports the investigation on the transportation effect on the decline of city commercial center in competition with large sub-urban shopping centers. A special case study was selected in Saga city in Japan where the city center has evident of declining. The data was gathered through an intensive questionnaires survey of the previous study. Statistical analysis of consumer behavior and a shopping location choice model were developed. It was found that one of the most important factors for shopping location choice is the availability of free parking lot in sub-urban shopping centers compare with the high paid parking in the city center. INTRODUCTION Recently, the influence of large sub urban shopping center toward the decline of inner city commercial center has attracted many researchers. The downtown shopping street is an important part of the city attractiveness. There is an apprehension that the decline of city center shopping center may leads to the decrease of the entire city appealing points. Moreover, the decline of the downtown shopping center creates many inconveniences for the transportation-disadvantaged people like the senior citizen and a handicapped person. It is necessary, therefore, to clarify the factors that influence the city decline so that the continuation of downtown decline may be controlled and the effect could be minimized. To prevent the decline of the city center due to urban sprawl, it is necessary to understand the influence of sub urban shopping mall development in competition with the city commercial center. This paper reports the investigation on the transportation effect on the decline of city commercial center in competition with large sub-urban shopping centers. Based on the previous study, it is understood that the rapid development of urban motorization is the reason of activation suburban development. The urban motorization may causes the shift of consumer shopping behaviors toward farther shopping destination as indicated by Yoshida et al (1999). This may lead to the increase of sub urban shopping centers users. In general, there is a strong competition between the downtown and sub urban shopping centers. We conjecture that suburban shopping center development is the main factor for the decline of the commercial establishment in the downtown area. However, the details of this conjecture have not been clarified enough at the present stage. We aim to examine the decline the commercial establishment of the downtown by focusing on the transportation point of view. In this research, we analyze the decline factors of downtown shopping street based on the change of the past and present transportation. The significant of this research is due to the uniqueness of study area for research decline the commercial establishment of the downtown due to change of the transportation system factors. The research may demonstrate as real example of the investigation of transportation system factors (i.e. parking. public transportation facilities and motorization) on the decline of the city rather than on the city growth.