- Valuing service and retail structures in core areas of cities   1750 kb by    Ledwon, Slawomir | slawomir.ledwon@gmail.com    Short Outline The paper describes the methodology to evaluate service and retail structures in cities in relation to their spatial form and possible future changes. Abstract Contemporary, rapid changes in cities create the need to evaluate and protect its existing structure. Many elements are analysed and evaluated. Built structure, urban and architectural heritage, historical landmarks, scarcity of environmental assets are all very precious. But what is also natural to the centre itself are its functional features. One of them is retailing. Over time services have been exposed to many pressures. New shopping centres built outside cities aided sprawl, and this sprawl created demand to build new centres. Apart from that more of the public space and social activity has moved to virtual space – communication over distance sometimes seems easier than in close proximity. In this case “traditional” urban activity is also an asset of the city core. What stimulates that are vibrant high streets. Over time retail formats are also changing. Competition from virtual space is competitive to traditional brick and mortar outlets, these also adapt and change to face new demands. All these create new circumstances to plan new retail and service networks and look differently at their role in cities. The article describes the methodology for identifying, surveying and evaluating existing city centre’s service and retail structure. By recording information about spatial location of services that is combined with basic information about their types a database is created. This method also introduces an innovative smartphone application that aids surveying, which is also described in the article. Based on this data an assessment of the core structure can be made that illustrates the spatial distribution of different outlets. It can also help do determine central areas. A case study of Polish city Gdynia is analysed over time in 1998, 2008 and 2012. Changes are also related to changing retail formats as well as strategies to locate new large shopping centres. The article also argues how the condition of these structures can be evaluated and looks on strategies how inner cities can be intensified while remaining the right mix and balance of services. Apart from that it questions which of them are really valuable to citizens. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper