Location Patterns of Street Commerce

The City Form Lab is researching location patterns of retail and service establishments in dense urban settings. We are particularly interested in whether and how the distribution of neighborhood commerce is affected by the spatial configuration of the built environment – the physical pattern of urban infrastructure, the spacing and sizes of buildings, and the geometry of circulation routes. We have developed an innovative methodology for estimating the importance of different location and accessibility factors while controlling for spatial clustering among stores, yielding more reliable coefficients for environmental qualities that attract neighborhood commerce. We have completed a study of retail location patterns in Cambridge & Somerville, MA, and are now extending the analysis to Los Angeles, CA and Singapore. We argue that understanding retail location patterns in urban settings is not only important for improving retail location theory, but also essential for designing economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable urban neighborhoods.