Towards Attaining Sustainable Retail Property Locations: The Relationships between Supply, Demand, and Accessibility of Retail Spaces

Abstract

This study explored retail location performance of cities by investigating relationships between changes in retail property stock (supply), changes in retail rental value (demand), and spatial accessibility (retail consumer movement) across three UK cities, namely, Leeds, Newcastle, and York. This is to understand how retail locations and assets can be managed sustainably. In this sense, sustainability was considered through a dual focus in this paper: (1) the efficient use of retail property assets for economic purposes and (2) the impact of these physical retail assets on the local environment in terms of carbon footprint. The study relied on space syntax ideology in computing spatial accessibility index and adopted business rate datasets in computing changes in retail rental value and stock. Findings showed that spatial accessibility across retail locations could predict the performance of retail rental value (but not stock) across the sampled cities. The study further showed that extent of city analysis (scale) is significant in estimating retail location performance and understanding the influence of accessibility. This evidence has the potential to facilitate better decision-making concerning the planning, design, and management of retail locations and spaces. The study is significant because it can serve as a reference for promoting an urban sustainability agenda, especially in ensuring that urban land and properties are used optimally to maximise their social, economic, and environmental values.