Back to the Future : Shifting Patterns of Retail Typology

The determination of luxury brands over the past decade to build new and provocative flagship stores in select urban centers and on time-tested fashion streets may have reflected the calculus of commercial economics and an emergent desire of retailers to embrace vibrancy and excitement brought by urbanity. It is also a manifestation of the recognition and intuition of prestige retailers—who are in the lead in fashion, branding and studying (and anticipating) consumer behavior and demographic change—that an underlying rotation or tectonic shift in retail typology is leading retail back to the city. This chapter discusses the internal design logic embedded in the ever-changing development of physical retail forms and, through analytical examination, underscores how macro-determinants and multiple cultural and social forces might have propelled retail and its typology, including that for luxury retailing, to accelerate or alter the patterns of urban growth. Initial research by the author on the evolution of retail typology over a timeline, speculates a periodic rotation or reversion to basic retail forms in response to new or coalescing external forces