The notion that a place can have a quantifiable value as a consequence of its identity has formed the basis of a number of my Shopping Centre News articles. In this article, I look specifically at the possibility of attributing connectivity value, with both direct economic benefits and indirect cultural and social benefits, to retail and town centre precincts. This was born of a research collaboration between Hames Sharley and the University of Technology Sydney Business and Architecture Schools. The purpose of this collaboration is to evolve a connectivity metric within the Activity Centres Measuring Toolkit. The reason to undertake this research is our deep belief that good connectivity will drive exemplary city-making, including best practice and future-facing retail precincts. The vehicle to undertake this is the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA).
The UDIA NSW is currently hosting an international competition called CityLife to elevate the quality of research and development in the creation of our Australian cities. The idea is that cities are the lifeblood of our economy. This is as much about our retail assets and town centre precincts as it is about asset classes such as commercial, health or the ever-expanding residential market.
The UDIA identifies that, according to the United Nations’ statistics, more than 54% of the world’s population live in urban areas. By 2030, this figure may be as high as 70%. In Australia, the World Bank estimates that this figure is currently 89% and rising. This is fundamental to retail growth and delivery in our cities.
The urban population explosion is leading to a number of well-documented issues for cities in Australia, the more common ones being potential future health problems, an affordability crisis, and difficulties in access.
The retail sector is not immune to this discussion and, like other sectors, has a responsibility to improving our cities and to better respond to the contemporary needs and aspirations of the consumer and community. If the way we currently plan for and grow our cities is under the microscope, then so too is the way we conceive, design and implement our retail assets. The UDIA proposition is that we are working toward a paradigm shift in how we plan and develop our cities in the future. The three pillars of investigation are livability, affordability and connectivity. By extension, we are also working toward a paradigm shift in how we deliver retail-based town and activity centres, and how connectivity has the most significant application in the retail space.
Hames Sharley, together with UTS, has been premiated as a finalist in the Connectivity category of CityLife. Our big idea is to create a Connectivity Measuring Toolkit that can capture the direct and indirect benefit of connected systems as they contribute to public life, including retail environments. As a new evaluation tool, it can provide evidential justification for future investment in the urban realm and its assets. This is of cross-benefit to the public and private sectors responsible for the delivery of places and infrastructure within the future city, and can provide a means of evaluating the competitive advantage of proposed projects and programs.
We know that future retail precincts will not only look different but will also behave differently. Indeed, and as I have discussed previously, the Brookings Institution notes that we are witnessing a significant and definable shift in the spatial geography of our cities. Whereas the twentieth century was focused on what we now understand to be traditional economics and traditional land-use planning, the future city will be founded on a network economy – either through physical clustering or virtual connections. This will take the form of agglomerations of use, global connections, technology, transport infrastructure and active infrastructure. Measuring the benefit of clustering networking, be it the true values of physical or virtual infrastructure, will enable governments, investors, designers, planners and the community to make informed decisions on investment scenarios. This will facilitate smart decision-making.
The best on-the-ground example of this research is currently being undertaken by the University of Technology Sydney Business School, and is related to tourism. A number of academics have begun data collection and analysis for the urban tourism sector which, as it turns out, is directly applicable to the retail sector. The study of urban tourism and associated focus on urban tourist precincts is a growing area of interest as practitioners, researchers and policy makers seek to understand the phenomenon of tourism and the tourist dollar within
the urban environment.
In Australia, research in this area has hitherto lacked integration and has not engaged sufficiently with the contextual setting of the urban environment. But not anymore. For example, the recent tourist Tag-and-Release project in downtown Sydney (yes, they really tagged and released tourists) was focused on tourist mobility – put simply, where tourists went and, by elimination, where they didn’t. The data was collected via a GPS device that tourists elected to wear for the period of a day. The data could equally be collected off mobile devices. The simple findings for the City of Sydney were that the majority of tourists march up and down George Street (prior to its closure for the construction of the light rail) from Town Hall to Circular Quay, with some movement on Pitt Street Mall. They simply don’t venture further than that in the downtown area, be it because of signage, activation or tourist maps. Once they get to Circular Quay, they board a ferry to Manly or Taronga Zoo, and back again.
The data recorded for Taronga Zoo is extremely translatable to the retail sector. In those recordings it became apparent that there are areas of the zoo that receive less than adequate visitation. Once recorded and presented to the zoo authorities, this data confirmed a hunch, if you will, that the area was less visited than others. The result is an ongoing capital works program to adjust access and focus of the area to increase visitation. The same approach can be applied to understanding retail areas, be they traditional retail environments or those that are in town centre locations. We often sense that areas are less patronised than others, but calculations of that phenomenon have not been available.
The Connectivity Measuring Toolkit can put an evidence-based value on this physical situation, and augment already established and sophisticated sales data analysis. The benefit is the ability to quantify and qualify to boards, investors, and development partners where expenditure should occur to elevate the productivity and activation of the retail space.
The possibilities of the Connectivity Measuring Toolkit are far greater than pure measurement. The research can provide a foundation for unlocking untapped benefits for visitors, owners, businesses and trade. It can simplify planning decisions by providing a common platform for examining and assessing projects for developers and governments alike. By extension, it can bring developers and governments together by providing a common ground for mutually agreeable outcomes to be tested, discussed and refined. Moreover, it can merge the essential economic imperatives with physical outcomes, demonstrating a relationship between good economics and good design. Together with the UTS Business School approach to ‘design thinking’, these practical needs of our industry can be founded on integrative thinking that bring together the traditional way of delivering retail projects. This evokes a new way of creative thinking that gives new focus to the challenges of business in a globalised world and enables active engagement with the community.
Better connecting retail assets, be it virtually or physically, with the contemporary city is essential to the sustainability of the assets.
This integration is essential in order to positively contribute to the activation of our urban retail places as vibrant destinations and continue to support the transition away from sterile, mono-use locations of the mid-twentieth century. It is evident this is a cross-industry initiative that benefits all aspects of city-making, but retail can be a catalyst. By embedding the assets within the movement patterns of the city, virtually connecting them to people and like-minded places, and integrating them with development and transport networks, Australian retail will continue to lead on a world stage. The more tools at our fingertips to enable this outcome, the better. SCN
Note: The finalists of the UDIA NSW CityLife competition, including the Hames Sharley and UTS team, presented their research proposition at an industry event called The Pitch in February 2016.
