A New Vocabulary for Understanding Retail Change in Scotlands Town - - PDF document

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A New Vocabulary for Understanding Retail Change in Scotland’s Town Centres?

Professor Leigh Sparks, Institute for Retail Studies, University of Stirling

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Scottish Government Context

• SNP Government; widely

popular

• Town Centre Review and

Town Centre Action Plan

• Community Empowerment,

Social Justice, Equality and Inclusion

• Very Anti “League Tables”

and pejorative descriptors

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Retail Change in Scotland’s Town Centres

• Fraser Review of Town

Centres and Town Centre Action Plan

• Town Centres have more

than a retail problem and the solutions are beyond retailing

• But retailing and retail

change a vital component we need to understand

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Measurement of Retail Change in Scotland’s Town Centres?

• Scottish Government
• Local Government
• Other Providers

– BRC – SRSM – Springboard Footfall

• Local Data Company

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Our Interest in Change Measurement in Scotland

• Scotland’s Retail

Summits

• ESRC/LDC/University of

Stirling PhD Studentship

• Scotland’s Towns

Partnership (STP)

• Understanding Scottish

Places (USP)

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Scottish Retail Summits

• Summit One 2013

– Ground Breaking – Media Coverage Extensive – Measurement Development; Persistent vacancy – Explanations

• Summit Two 2014

– Expanded and enhanced coverage

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The Wrong Vocabulary?

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The Vocabulary of Vacancy?

• When we talk about

vacancy what are we really talking about?

• When we talk about

vacancy change what is it that we have measured and what does it mean?

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Falling Vacancy Occurs How and Means What?

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New Concepts in Vacancy?

• How do we define and

measure?

– Structure – Diversity – Vacancy – Churn – Resilience – Persistency

• And on what basis?

– LFL (e.g. LFL Vacancy)

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The ESRC/LDC/University of Stirling PhD

• The research questions focus on:

– What are the appropriate measures beyond ‘simple’ vacancy to understand the changing structure of retail in towns and town centres? – What do these new measures show for Scotland’s towns at national and local level? – How can these new measures and understandings inform new management of town centres and places?

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Understanding Scottish Places (USP)

• Launched 29 April 2015 by

Margaret Burgess MSP

• Partnership working
• Consistency and

comparability the key principles

• 479 towns in Scotland with
• ver 1000 people
• No league tables and no

pejorative labels

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USP Methodology

Geography

• Defining the geography of towns to be included in USP

Socio-demographic typology

• Setting the context of each town using the 2011 Census

to build a typology

Size Classification • Grouping towns by resident settlement size Inter-relationship model

• Exploring how towns inter-relate and are

independent/dependent

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USP Inter-relationship Model

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Ambitions and Workplan

• Developing the

measurement concepts through the PhD and testing these in towns

• Scottish Summit V3 and
• ther potential LDC

work (inc USP analysis)

• Could we ever get LDC

coverage to equate to USP?

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Conclusions

• We’ve all done some great stuff in the last few

years with LDC and other data providers

• But we’ve only scratched the surface
• If we set the framework right then we can

combine even more and develop our sophistication and impact

• But we have to become more consistent and

accurate in delivering our material

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Web: www.stirlingretail.com Email: Leigh.sparks@stir.ac.uk Telephone: 01786 467384 Twitter: sparks_stirling

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