Rethinking Retail

Retail debate is dominated by “shopping centre vs main street”.Is this paradigm missing the point?  
Melbourne’s arcades and laneways reveals a grey space in between and some lessons in what makes good retail work...

What makes retail tick?  Pop-up shops and captive markets, airport as mall and merchandising the city - all of its messy complexity. What of the so-called “death of the shopping mall”. It would seem there are two problems with the debate:

1. Shopping malls are neither good nor bad.  The concept of a sheltered shopping space is as old as the Greek agora. Centre management is functionally no different than (in vogue) office building management. Shopping malls are hailed as new town centres (Rouse Hill) while others reviled as blights.  Attaching a normative value to the shopping mall only clouds the issue common to all development  (what does it do to its context).
2. Shopping malls are part of a retail continuum.  Airport shopping is in explosive growth.  Chambers of commerce are forming collectives to manage streets.  The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping (Koolhaus et al (eds), Project on the City 2) reveals not only a long evolution, but also many future paths.

So, what makes a good retail offering, be it a great shopping mall, or a great section of a great street?  Why are there hubs and nodes, and languishing tails?  What can we use to evaluate if a retail proposal is good?

The first part of this issue is what makes retail succeed. Leave aside preconditions for retail (location and size), which are a well known science beginning with Reilly’s Law of Retail Gravitation, and give no guidance to form.  Instead, we can look at Melbourne, currently exploding with grey areas between malls and streets - arcades and laneways - provided some guidance.

First, the “shopping malls”.  Three malls in particular are worthy of mention.  In 2004, the former Melbourne general post office, was redeveloped into a retail centre.  Also beginning in 2004, Melbourne Central formerly a  “big box” Daimaru department store was redeveloped into a network of retail passages (a process now underway in neighbouring department stores).  Last is Collins two3four, a brand new multi-level arcade linking a major transport hub with the heart of an expanding network of cafes and fashion stores.

The first, Melbourne GPO, bucks several trends - it replaces a civic institution, and former “anchor” to Bourke Street, with a retail mall, emulant of 19th century arcades, complete with natural light and (some) open air retailing, under a centre manager’s banner. It is the antithesis of (comfort controlled) modern malls and yet 

still directed by centre management.  Despite these traits, pedestrian flow is high, and high-end retail occupies not only ground but upper floors. The second is a microcosm of the city, complete with bluestone (footpath) paving, daylight and narrow cheek-and-jowl storefronts.  It, too, has a variety of high end and speciality retail on ground and upper floors, high pedestrian volumes (greater than the former Daimaru) and even hosts a ‘fashion incubator’ space.  Conversely, in the heart of the traditional 'laneway' quarter, new mall Collins two3four lacks throngs of pedestrians and fully tenanted floors, despite adjacent Howey Place and the Block Arcade being the heart of Melbourne’s laneways.  

Why? Well one main differentiator may be the intensity of unique operators.  Melbourne GPO has main entrances on four sides (including an entrance through the adjacent and attached open air cafe), as well as connections to the city through street facing retail, tight ground level shops, and brands peering down from upper 

floors like a wedding cake.  Melbourne Central, particularly the newest arcade, has narrow storefronts which continue seamlessly to the edge of the street or, on upper floors, into the adjacent store, even packing multiple “front doors” into the single incubator tenancy.  Collins two3four, on the other hand, has only 8 shopfronts on ground level between Collins St and Howey Place, of which only 5 lie on the direct path, the remaining 3 on tangents.  The shopfronts are wide and spacious.  Circulation goes up, rather than opening out.  As a new operator, time will tell the success of Collins two3four, and the measures it adopts to enhance its standing.

Okay back to the street.  Brunswick Street booms with its own eccentric retail flavour for half a dozen blocks north of the city.  As with other great streets in the north (like Lygon Street), it peters out some distance from the city fringe.  But the near the city, too, it dies an agonising death, with lower pedestrian numbers, vacancies and a preponderance of service counter businesses in lieu of retail shops.  As with the arcades, the key appears to be intensity.  Five blocks on one side of the street were erased to build public housing, with no retail offering. The businesses on the surviving side reflect this change (as with most roads, mirroring uses from side to side), having devolved into charities, cheap eats and laundromats (left).

A block up, and despite taller buildings above, the slow rhythm of shopfronts make an equally slow transition to the heart of the bustling street.  From the next street corner, consistently narrow shopfronts (and cafe tables bridging the road reserves at corners) pick up the beat and pedestrian activity accordingly.  Several blocks further up the road, and despite containing few of the visual hallmarks of great streets, such as trees, consistent awnings, meandering frontages or elegant facades, the street throngs with pedestrians and retail activity (bottom left).  

Conversely, only a stones throw from Chapel Street’s core - the intersection with Commercial Road - lies housing projects just as great as on Brunswick Street with no apparent effect on Chapel St retail.  Even the jewel among icons, Chapel Street, exhibits soft points around Toorak Road, where wide shopfronts and internal malls on both sides sap much of the energy of the street, but do not appear to benefit with throngs of internal patrons in exchange. Again between Prahran and Windsor, where pharmacies, super-markets and liquor store frontages are four or five times the width of their northern neighbours, and yet the street loses intensity at that point and further south.