Producing & Consuming Public Space: A ‘Rhythmanalysis’ of the Urban Park

Research suggests an opportunity to offer a more comprehensive analysis of temporal consumption experiences encountered by park users, and the subsequent contribution to a perceived ‘sense of place’. Using visual ethnography and rhythmanalysis, our study distances our analysis from textual accounts of park usage as well as provide policy recommendations

The Victorian arcade as contemporary retail form?

This paper analyses ground floor retail occupancy trends in Barton Arcade in Manchester, UK, from its construction in the 1870s to the present. The paper begins by discussing the development of arcades and acknowledges their importance as a retail built form, before discussing their relative demise in the twentieth century. Analysis of occupancy data from Slater’s/Kelly’s Directories (1876-1965) and Goad plans (1967 onwards) reveal significant continuities in occupancy, as well as trends towards an experiential orientation of the retail activity within the arcade, which suggests that an arcade which was perceived in the mid-1980’s to have little future might have successfully found a new lease of life. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for a continuing contemporary role for Victorian Arcades such as the Barton Arcade, and for taking a microhistorical perspective in the study of retail history

Process, content and context considerations influencing the marketing of urban areas as shopping destinations

This paper reports the results of a series of semi-structured interviews held in two English cities with stakeholders who hold potential responsibility for the marketing of the city as a shopping destination. The findings of the research are structured in terms of the process by which place marketing activity is developed (relating to the remits of individual actors, the extent and nature of their interaction and the process of planning place marketing activity), the content of place marketing activity (relating to the extent to which marketing activity is consumer-focused, the nature of the elements of the urban place product and their interaction, and the specific marketing activities undertaken), and context factors influencing place marketing activity in the specific locations (following de Wit and Meyer's (1998) framework). Analysis of the data from the interviews reveal numerous actors with potential responsibility for the marketing of the urban areas, who engage in frequent formal and informal interaction in order to achieve their specific remits. Regarding content of place marketing activity, the marketing of the town as a shopping destination is largely the remit of the town centre manager, although the importance of retailing is articulated by other actors. Various important contextual factors specific to retailing which impact on place marketing activity are identified. These include the level of shop rentals, supply of retail premises, car parking availability and tariffs, and the presence of off-centre retail facilities

The Role of Community-led Food Retailers in Enabling Urban Resilience

Our research examines the extent to which community-led food retailers (CLFRs) contribute to the resilience and sustainability of urban retail systems and communities in the UK, contributing to existing debates on the sustainability and resilience of the UK’s urban retail sector. While this literature has predominantly focused on the larger retail multiples, we suggest more attention be paid to small, independent retailers as they possess a broader, more diffuse spatiality and societal impact than that of the immediate locale. Moreover, their local embeddedness and understanding of the needs of the local customer base, provide a key source of potentially sustainable competitive advantage. Using spatial and relational resilience theories, and drawing on 14 original qualitative interviews with CLFRs, we establish the complex links between community, place, social relations, moral values, and resilience that manifest through CLFRs. In doing so, we advance the conceptualization of community resilience by acknowledging that to realize the networked, resilient capacities of a community, the moral values and behavior of the retail community needs to be ascertained. Implications and relevant recommendations are provided to secure a more sustainable set of capacities needed to ensure resilient, urban retail systems, which benefit local communities

A kaleidoscopic view of the territorialized consumption of place

Drawing on Brighenti’s (2010, 2014) theoretical exposition of territorology, we extend current conceptualisations of place within the marketing literature by demonstrating that place is relationally constructed through territorialising consumption practices which continuously produce and sustain multifarious versions of place. In our fieldwork, we embrace a non-representational sensitivity and employ a multi-sensory ethnography, thus helping to illuminate the performative aspects of everyday life relating to people who use urban green spaces. Our analysis articulates three key facets relating to the process of territorialising consumption practices: (1) Tangible and intangible elements of boundary-making; (2) Synchronicity of activities; and (3) Sensual experiences. Taken together these facets advance a kaleidoscopic perspective in which spatial, temporal and affective dimensions of the micro-practices of consumption territories-in-the-making are brought into view. Moreover, our empirical research adds an affective dimension to Brighenti’s theoretical elucidation of the formation and dissolution of territories, thereby incorporating sensual imaginations and bodily experiences into the assemblages of heterogeneous materials that sustain territories