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Successful, Vibrant, Town Centres Contribute Importantly To The Local ...


Successful, vibrant, town centres contribute importantly to the local economy, and the local community and society. They act as focal points of community interaction and also have a role as service centres. For this reason, many local councils are now switching the focus from out of town shopping centre developments to town centre developments. This switch in policy is part of what Schiller (1986) terms ‘the third wave' of decentralisation, during which planners realised that ‘out of town' developments were not helpful for town centres and were, amongst others things, damaging for the environment and for social equality in areas in which out-of-town shopping centres were built. Many academic research studies have shown that in-town shopping centre developments are highly successful, indeed, that towns can substantially benefit from opening such in-town shopping centres.
The literature on in-town shopping centres is, however, scanty, and so the case is still not settled as to how in-town shopping centres impact the local economy and the local community is not as complete as it could be. Other studies of the effects of building shopping centres on the existing town centre retail trade focus on the effects of out-of-town shopping centres, not in-town shopping centres, and, as such, this literature will not be considered here as part of this dissertation. In addition, many studies have undertaken research looking in to this question and have found complex patterns that are not suggestive of exclusive benefits; many, for example, present limited customer research shows that more research needs to be conducted on this issue.
A 1997 paper compared in-town shopping centres with out-of-town shopping centres, and found that, although the Government wishes to preserve town centres as the centre of communities, based on customer surveys in two shopping centres in Preston, Lancashire, one in-town and one out-of-town, consumers have distinct preferences for one type of shopping centre and will use that type, no matter what is done to the other type in order to make it more attractive to them; some people simply prefer to shop out of town, and will always do so, even if the town centre is re-developed and made in to a commercial hub.


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