Alessandro ARALDI, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur, ESPACE, France
Benjamin WAYENS, IGEAT, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Giovanni FUSCO, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur, ESPACE, France
The spatial organisation of stores in urban spaces plays a significant role in the production, functioning and development of cities. While this association has been widely investigated considering the spatial economic and socio-cultural points of view, less attention has been given to the city considered for its physical properties and its generative process. Within this context, two disciplines have been independently developing significant aspects and theories contributing to a better understanding of the relationship between the spatial organisation of retail and the physical form of cities: retail geography and urban morphology.
These two research domains, rooted in the second half of the XIX century scientific literature (Madry 2016, Hofmeister 2004) acquired their own intellectual independence at the end of the 50s/60s. The former focusses on questions of land use and location of urban functions rather than the analysis of their relationship with the physical properties of the urban form. On the contrary, new original concepts in the study of the physical properties of cities and their underlying generative process are proposed by the latter (Olivera 2016). Although both disciplines acknowledged how retail represents an element structuring or structured for or by the city (Metton 1984), they continue to develop independently.
It becomes evident how a better understanding of the relationship between the retail distribution and the physical city might only be reached through a full convergence of retail geography and urban morphology theories and notions, overcoming their traditional separation. This work represents the first step in this direction: a review of the combined literature from these two scientific domains is proposed, with a special focus on those theoretical and empirical studies discussing the relationship between retail distribution and the physical form of cities. Future research perspectives are also presented and discussed.
Mots clés : Retail Geography|Urban Morphology|Urban Form
A104303AA