Many decisions must be made in operating a retail business. Retailers carefully select products, service levels, and brand images to match their desired market position (McGoldrick 1990). Within their marketing strategies they also make choices that are manifested in the urban landscape; sites are chosen and store environments constructed with the fundamental goal of attracting customers and spurring sales (Scott 1970; Ghosh and McLafferty 1987; Wrigley and Lowe 2002). Locations that are accessible to customers are desirable in order to draw as many people through the shop doors. Likewise, engaging environments are designed to attract the attention of potential customers and keep shoppers on site as long as possible.
Over time, retailers have had to adapt their strategies to deal with changing socio-economic conditions and to keep pace with technological innovations. As transportation technologies advanced, accessibility patterns throughout the city changed, prompting retailers to adapt their location strategies. New technology is also incorporated within the buildings. Electric lighting, expansive plate glass windows, and the accommodation of pallets and forklifts all have been used to increase sales or efficiencies. Emporia are designed and located to accommodate the lifestyles of the day, be they the daily provisioning of groceries in the era before home refrigeration, or the weekly bulk purchase of goods two-income households of the twenty-first century. Stores also incorporate the fashionable architectural styles of the era, keeping current with contemporary trends. Additionally, product
selection found on the shelves reflects the changing demands of the market, as well as the availability of new commodities on the supply side.
All of these marketing decisions are not mutually exclusive. The determination of what products to sell often directs where the store should be
competition for these areas is brisk and land-values high. Over time, the complexity of this decision making process has increased; today retailers employ advanced geospatial technology and teams of analysts to determine the best sites and hire marketing firms and employ focus groups to hone brand images (Pick 2005). Long before the techniques were highly developed, retailers implicitly demonstrated a sophisticated logic in their operations. Although they did not have the access to advanced decision making capabilities, the early retailers still undertook refined marketing strategies: from selecting their location to product offerings and display to the design of the retail spaces themselves. Even in the rudimentary stages of settlement, these series of decisions resulted in a retail landscape sharing
characteristics with today’s city. Throughout the evolution of the retail landscape these strategies are united by retailers’ search for profit maximization.
This chapter examines the functional and spatial aspects of the retail landscape as it evolved over time. The analysis is based on the model of how retailers shape the landscape presented in the opening chapter (see Figure 1.2). The model is dynamic, with changes in any of the agents or structures rippling throughout, and eventually being manifested in the urban forms retailers create in the landscape. The landscape is read at various pivotal eras to see not only how it has changed, but the impact of such things as transportation and economics on retail practices. The chapter answers the objectives of showing how the spatial, functional and morphological characteristics of the urban retail landscape have evolved from early settlement to the contemporary ear. In so doing, similarities and differences are discerned as the landscape progresses through time. Implementing the HGIS provides information about the entire retail landscape and its relationship to the city. Shifting from the macro to the micro, the HGIS permits analysis on several key areas of the city in greater detail.
The chapter begins by documenting the functional composition of retailers in each of the representative eras of development (1863, 1881, 1916, 1958 and 2004), as well as normalizing their numbers by the population in each period. Consideration is given to the implications of the advent of chain stores in the landscape. The locations of stores are then mapped in each era, showing retail’s changing place in the urban fabric over time as well as to facilitate the examination of locational preferences of different store types.
With the spatial and functional composition of retailing over time
documented, the chapter turns to analysing the morphology of the retail landscape using the contemporary GIS layers which document these features. The
contemporary files allow for the study of the retail landscapes built at different periods, with the distance from the core used as a proxy for timing of development. Calculations show the relative proportion of retailing in comparison with the other contemporary land-uses. The location of retail sites in the contemporary landscape are shown as they snake out from the core along the major arteries. The landscape is divided into its town-plan components (streets, lots, and building block-plans), so that each may be examined and then related to each other. Scatter plots show changing lots sizes and building footprints over time. Analysing the building forms in three dimensions shows their relationship to the town-plan, as well as the
available technology and the general market conditions of their era of construction. A third component of the chapter is a case study to compare and contrast the morphologies of three landscapes representing the quintessential forms of retail development. These include a traditional downtown core, an early retail strip along Hamilton Road, and the planned shopping centres of the contemporary era as seen in the Masonville district. This reveals many differences, as well as some
similarities in their land-use, town-plan, and three-dimensional building characteristics.
Analysis shifts focus from micro- thru macro-scales throughout the chapter, in order to paint a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the retail landscape. It looks at the city-wide retail landscape in each era to provide a foundation for
understanding retail’s place and face (composition). By looking longitudinally, the work presents new insight into the changes over time in the retail landscape and the different types of retail forms constructed in each era. Contrasting different retail forms is both valuable and novel; most previous studies look at only one retail type, for example Shields’ (1989) examination of shopping malls and Jakle and Mattson’s (1981) study of the retail strip. Others have looked at entire retail landscapes, but only for a point in time, missing the opportunity to document changes therein over time (Berry et al. 1963; Berry et al. 1988).
The papers in the edited collection by Benson and Shaw (1992) do address change over time, but still for only relatively short periods, and do not document
retail changes from the early settlement to the modern day. They also pertain to scattered case-studies across Canada, Britain and Germany, whereas this study looks at retailing specifically in one study to map its evolutionary trajectory. The foundation constructed in this chapter is used to support the two following chapters which examine disparate but influential retail forms in greater detail; those being the mainstreet shopping district between 1880 and 1930, and the post-World War II planned shopping centres.