Towards a genealogy of urban shopping: types, adaptations and resilience

Abstract

This typological account of the urban morphology of shopping presents a diagrammatic genealogy of urban retail types from traditional markets, streets and plazas through various adaptations and mutations into the contemporary shopping mall and power centre. This genealogy shows an increased car-dependency, privatized and centralized control, and disintegration from urban life. Many cities have been transformed by contemporary retail types that are less walkable, equitable, productive and resilient than those from which they were derived. The challenge lies in the invention of new retail types with potential for re-integration into more resilient forms of urban development.