Replacis, Retail planning for Cities Sustainability

Urban sustainability can be associated with how diversified retail systems respond with efficiency to the needs, wants and desires of different kinds of consumers. Recent trends show that different urban retail facilities have distinct levels of resilience and that these can be empowered by sector and spatial planning policies.
REPLACIS intends for a better understanding of the role played by consumption in the production of new urban developments. It also aims at comparing the resilience level of different urban retail areas by a set of indicators. City retail facilities are in the project read from a doble perspective, (i) as the appraisal of retail landscapes as material artefacts selling of goods and services, and (ii), as the understanding of outlets and shopping areas as places of experiences and social distinction. The project puts a special focus on how contemporary public spaces transform into consumption objects used by retail developers and place makers.
The methodology to assess the vulnerabilities and the adaptive capacity of the urban shopping districts and retail environments will combine two sets of indicators. One is based on quantitative data and evaluates the dynamics of shopping districts. The other is anchored in qualitative data gathered by observation studies, questionnaires and interviews, and it looks for the identification and assess of consumer’s values and the sense of place.
The urban sustainability approaches of today often claim compact cities with liveable centres and well preserved neighbourhoods as a common goal. Simultaneously, global trends are deepening both similarities and challenges, producing new urban policies, driven by competitiveness, and engaged on cultural or consumption-led regeneration projects. However, every city looks different and a successful policy in one place does not necessarily lead to the success of another one with different social values, institutions and rules. By using transnational research, the project will try to encompass both similar and different aspects of the different countries, trying to fix a set of comparable indicators that can be applied in different urban socio-spatial contexts. Through the social learning in case studies and an interactive approach between scientists, policy makers and retail stakeholder, it will be possible to assess the vulnerabilities and the adaptive capacities of shopping areas and to think about the policy options to promote urban sustainability.

In short, the research project aims to achieve the following objectives:
•To investigate the urban retail changes and its driving forces and how planning policies in different countries are dealing with this issue in order to promote the urban sustainability.
•To offer insights on the role played by consumption and retailing in the production of the postmodern city, namely through the new urban retail environments, consumption-led regeneration projects, and the “public” space generated by these new urban developments.
•To conceive a theoretical and methodological framework to assess the resilience of different urban retail areas to back the spatial planning policies concerned with the urban sustainable development and the competitiveness of the traditional retail facilities and shopping environments.
•To compare the resilience level of different urban retail centres by a set of indicators in view of recent changes induced by the new retail dynamics, with special reference to the malling of centres and peripheries, the spectacular consumption-led regeneration of brownfields and other post-industrial areas, the crisis of downtowns, and the decline of retail neighbourhood centres.