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In this paper, the density and location of retail properties located within the primary retailing areas of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool and Nottingham are investigated over a 17 year period. The study is novel due to the original spatial databases developed and unique combination of established methods employed to explore spatial change within these northern UK cities. The paper starts from the premise that retailing markets display adaptive resilience where adaptations in use and variation in retail clustering will occur in response to endogenous and exogenous shocks that disturb the market's agglomerative and competitive effects. The results suggest that significant new retail-led developments have intra-urban spatial outcomes that impact on the size and location of prime and secondary retailing pitches. In urban retailing centres where there have been no substantive supply disruptions, disturbances in the socio-economic environment can create contractions at the peripheral edges of the prime retailing pitch. This study is significant in providing a historical perspective of the micro-level effects of new development, changing customer shopping habits and shifting retailer location preferences. In addition, the research develops replicable and robust methods that can be employed to examine and monitor spatial change in urban centres. Understanding these dynamic micro-spatial effects are important for the future management of urban centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The retailing industry in the UK is experiencing unprecedented structural change. The impact on retailers has often dominated headlines, along with the impacts on local services and economies, but with little attention given to the implications for property owners and practitioners. Exploring and understanding the responsiveness of landlords, and their behaviours, is essential to understanding the adaptiveness of a retailing system. This study employs semi-structured interviews to examine the short- and long-term changes in the retail market and the actions of landlords in response. The findings span the period prior to and during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and reveal that fundamental changes have occurred to establish tenant covenant norms and the traditional retail leasing model. The paper explores these changes, including a shift in tenant risk, reposition of the leasing model in favour of tenants, generally, and greater application of turnover rents. The pressing challenge for current valuation practitioners, therefore, is to incorporate these fundamental changes within the market into the pricing of retail assets. Significant progress in this area to date, as explored in the paper, has been limited although greater application of discounted cashflow techniques is set to be encouraged by the RICS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brown, Peter Hendee. America's Waterfront Revival: Port Authorities and Urban Redevelopment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. 228 pp. ISBN: 9780812241228. Many authors have explored the local and global implications [...]

This paper investigates the formal instruments of design governance and the urban design decision-making environment in Chinese cities. It identifies Shenzhen, Shanghai and Nanjing as three cities pioneering in design-led planning in China and critically evaluates their approaches using a series of 'best practice' principles for design review and development management. The findings are based on 20 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, a review of their design portfolios, and an analysis of urban design policies and plans. The paper identifies the progress made with design governance in the three 'pioneer' cities as well as the challenges associated with adopting more design-sensitive planning practice. It concludes with four recommendations for Chinese cities. These focus on foregrounding sense of place in city-wide urban design visions, raising the quality of design guidance and codes, more effectively coordinating regulations produced by different government departments and agencies, and widening opportunities for public participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This practice paper reflects on the national design advice service in Scotland that has been operated by Architecture & Design Scotland (A&DS) since 2005. Placed in the context of research on design review practice, the paper describes how design review in Scotland has evolved from a traditional panel model operating alongside a range of training and skills development functions into a more holistic and dynamic design advice service. The paper argues that the evolution of design review in Scotland signifies an innovative shift away from the often combative setting of a design panel, where the force of an argument frequently wins the day, towards a more measured, iterative and collaborative process of nurturing and enabling well-designed buildings and places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]