Retailing: why geographical

1
Retailing why geographical?

• Still a spatial activity US 2nd favourite
  leisure activity
• Defines our urban spaces streets, malls, markets
• Defines who we are identity through consumption
• Polarisation
• Concentration the largest retailers are some of
  the biggest employers in the world
• New technology epos, fast fashion (Zara)
  internet spectacular failures such as Boo.com,
  plus Amazon and Ebay

2
Shopping centres
3
Retail geography

• Retail geography, potentially one of the most
  interesting of sub-disciplineshas been made into
  one of the most boring of fields (Nick Blomley)
• In Britain, the groundwork for the new system of
  post-fordism was laid not in manufacturing but in
  services (Robin Murray)

4
Retail geography

• Until the preoccupation with manufacturing and
  the neglect of services in such debates is
  rectified, our understanding of the economic
  landscape of post-fordism will remain incomplete
  and one-sided (Ron Martin 1990)
• A reconstructed retail geography finds itself at
  the very heart of contemporary debate within
  critical human geography (Nick Blomley 1986)

5
Retail Geography

• The potential of retail geography is that
  categories such as economy or culture are
  constantly being shattered. The two seem mutually
  implicated (Blomley).

6
Shopping centres

• Were built on a large scale and pioneered by
  Victor Gruen, who aimed to restore the lost
  sense of commitment and belonging we can
  counteract the phenomenon of alienation,
  isolation and loneliness and achieve a sense of
  identity (Gruen 1973)

7
Retail places

• The globalisation of retailing is creating the
  ageographical city, a city without place attached
  to it (Sorkin, 1992).
• The mall is essentially a pseudoplace which works
  through spatial strategies of dissemblance and
  duplicity (John Goss)

8
Retail architecture spot the difference
9
Shopping centre capitalism

• Transforms our public spaces into sanitised,
  privatized serially reproduced brand zones.
• not only is shopping melting into everything,
  but everything is melting into shopping (Leong
  2001 129)

10
Mall of America, Minnesota

• The largest mall in the US. Opened in 1992 and is
  in many ways a small city in its own right. The
  mall covers 78 acres. It has over 400 specialty
  shops, a 14 screen movie theatre, nightclubs,
  bars, 22 restaurants and 23 fast food outlets.
  But that is not all. At the centre of this three
  story complex, beneath an immense hyperspace of
  skylights, mall developers have located a
  seven-acre theme park (Gottdiener 1998)

11
Malls
12
West Edmonton Mall, Canada

• WEM contains over 600 stores and services. It
  employs 18,000 people, contains almost 23 of
  Edmontons retail space. Mall attractions include
  a 7 acre waterpark, a national sized hockey
  league skating rink, an 18 hole miniature golf
  course, a 4 acre sea aquarium, four fully
  operational submarinesThis mega mall typifies
  Disneyfication and imagineering (Hopkins, 1990)

13
West Edmonton Mall
14
Brent Cross, London

• The Mother of All Malls (The Independent)
• Britains first purpose built regional shopping
  centre opened in 1976. Rents are as high as
  Londons West End, offering consumers a safe and
  climate-controlled alternative to the perceived
  dangers and unpredictability of city centre
  shopping

15
Malls
16
Malls of nowhere

• Vast, fully enclosed shopping malls. Lots of
  glass, light, stainless steel, chrome and
  graniteMost of the shops are outlets of large
  chainsLarge numbers of people traipsing through
  familiar structures, along well-travelled
  corridorsthese malls, corridors, consumers and
  shops could be almost anywhere Los Angeles,
  Singapore, Moscow, Rio or Johannesburg (Ritzer)

17
Markets in meltdown

• Consumption and entertainment becoming
  increasingly indistinguishable.
• Commodification as remorseless a process that
  must end in cultural meltdown. So shopping malls
  become the battleships of capitalism, bludgeoning
  consumers into unconsciousness

18
Chain

• Every 4 days a new Wal-Mart store opens somewhere
  in America. Cohen points to the blandness of our
  contemporary urban spaces shows shots of
  indistinguishable corporate complexes, each
  sporting the same shiny veneers and the same
  angular lines. Its increasingly difficult to
  tell where you are since so many places look the
  same. They are, he argues, becoming invisible.

19
Chain

• Theme parks,hotels and corporate centres
  worldwide are joined into a monolithic
  superlandscape
• The new monster malls contrive to combine
  retailing with the experiences of carnival,
  festival and tourism all in a single total
  environment. Shopping centres are tourist
  destinations, unreal.

20
Theme parks

• Someday perhaps office workers will need not
  even abandon their desks. They will simply watch
  a destination tape and swallow a vacation tablet.
  In the meantime we will just have to struggle
  along with the next best thing re-creations of
  the Great Outdoors, set inside sanitized domes.
  With sand Ron Gluckman, 1999 Morning Calm

21
Disney Paris
22
Fantasyland Disney Epcot
23
Conclusion

• Globalisation metaphors of cultural breakdown do
  not take into account a range of other more
  alternative consumption spaces and practices
• Consumption seen as intrinsically evil and
  morally corrupting. How accurate is this?
• Weak theorisation of consumer agency