Adapting the Town to a Diffusing Retail Interface

Abstract

Retail interface has been a significant generator of urban form in the past. The very existence of the town was often justified by market frontage, manifest in the street. The street as route has a significant place in the history of urban form. In this the street was the binding element of public realm, serving the line of frontage by which the private plot interacted with the public space of the town or city. Here the buyer expected to find the seller. Even when urban plots began to collect into blocks, the block edge still formed the primary front line between sale and purchase. The retail interface is however moving to require and define a very different urban form. The user now enters the city not via the street but via the parking lot. The retail plot no longer presents to the street. Both the shopper and the shop have uncoupled from the traditional urban fabric and re-positioned their relationship on assigned ground, or more recently on computer screen, unhindered by obligations to the heritage of the street. Although the street may be recalled in the shopping mall, it no longer collects and presents the frontage of the city. The readable understanding of the city by its user has thus changed. This paper, drawing from research on European urban settlements, documents some recent metamorphosis in the relationship between retail plot and public realm. The research methodology draws on cartographic regression, planning documentation, stakeholder interviews and settlement analysis, using a sample of 66 towns in Ireland. From its findings the paper concludes that the street, together with its support structure, is under significant relegation, with potential loss of purpose.