David Marsland

Central place practice: shopping centre attractiveness measures, hinterland boundaries and the UK retail hierarchy

Christallers (Central Places in Southern Germany (translated by Baskin C (1966)), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1933) well-known and much criticised ‘central place theory’ was based on classical, arguably unsustainable, economic assumptions such as the uniformity of consumers and travel. Nevertheless, it has been claimed that the emergence of shopping areas in UK towns could largely be explained in terms of central place principles (Retail Location: A Micro-Scale Perspective, Aldershot, Avebury, 1992). Brown drew support from the example of the retail hierarchy of Cardiff (UK, Store Location and Store Assessment Research, Chichester, Wiley, 1984): a town centre core radiating progressively further out with greater numbers of district centres, neighbourhood centres and finally local centres. Christallers theory was based on rigid ‘laws of distribution of central places’ and ‘laws of settlement’ which ‘often determine[d] with astonishing exactness, the location of central places’ in southern Germany. Guy considered that for useful application to UK retail, a more flexible interpretation was needed and that strict economic assumptions could be relaxed in a more pragmatic approach. The ‘classical’ approach fails to account for the positions and hinterland (or catchment area) boundaries of modern out-of-town regional shopping centres. Except in defining the components of places at various levels in the hierarchy, Christaller did not even consider the attractiveness of shopping areas in consumer choice. A number of other authors have investigated various measures to define positions in the retail hierarchy. In the Cardiff example, Guy used retail sales floor area as a surrogate measure. Systems have been proposed based on numbers and status of retail outlets (The New Guide to Shopping Centres of Great Britain, Hillier Parker, London, 1991; Shopping Centres, Mintel, London, 1997; J. Property Res. 9 (1992) 122–160; J. Property Res. 9 (1985) 122–160). This paper evaluates the authors’ empirically based measurement system for attractiveness that can be applied to out-of-town as well as in-town shopping centres. The approach adapts previous simple systems based on retailer counts. These have been combined in attractiveness measurements applied to definitions of position in the hierarchy. Results support the prediction of central place hinterland boundaries based on the authors’ attractiveness measures and adaptation of (The Law of Gravitation, Knickerbocker Press, New York, 1931) ‘Law’. The data fit exemplar published empirical data on shopping centre hinterlands more closely than do the commonly used drive-time isochrones.

Data mining for shopping centres – customer knowledge‐management framework

Relying on complex interdependencies between shoppers, retailers and owners, shopping centres are ideal for knowledge at management study. Retailers have been the forefront of data mining, but shopping centres have received little attention. Aspects of customer knowledge management for shopping centres are considered using analogies drawn from an exploratory questionnaire survey.

Cradle to Grave: Comparative Perspectives on the State of Welfare.

The welfare state in the Western world - American, British and Scandanavian experience the unusual case of Switzerland what are the lessons? towards reform of British and American social policy.

Support for the Family

Our reports in earlier pages of this book demonstrate graphically that, if the main direct destructive effect of state welfare is through its impact on work and work attitudes, the primary arena in which its long-term damage is done is the family. If welfare dependency is to be reduced, reforms of the work environment must be accompanied by measures designed to strengthen and support the family as a social institution.

It's my life: young people and leisure

There is urgent need for research which treats leisure as a central focus in studies of young people. The sociology of youth shows a neglect of women and of ethnic minorities, although ethnographic studies reveal the aimless frustration of working class youth. Schooling should be regarded as work, with a moritorium on leisure. A social educational approach is required, the basis of which is voluntarism. We need more information about what young people do with their free time, why, and with what effects. More attention should be given to the study of friendship and to in-depth studies of leisure styles.

Renewing British Welfare

The historical development of the British Welfare State embodied a number of destructive faults which are now major impediments to reform. Devotees of state provision have a dogmatic antipathy to market forces and an ideological allegiance to state welfare as an instrument of egalitarian politics. There is also an active poverty lobby and a huge vested interest in the status quo among state employees. Wholesale denationalisation of the Welfare State apparatus remains imperative.

Moral Hazards, Welfare Dependency, and the Underclass: The Welfare State as an Enemy of Society

It might seem more than enough to criticize the Welfare State for its philosophical incoherence, its redundancy in an era of prosperity and economic progress, its extravagant cost, and its bureaucratic inefficiency. There is, however, one further charge to be levelled against it and this the most serious of all.

Bankrupting Britain: The Costs of the Welfare State

Wherever Welfare States have been established, grave damage to the economy is evident. Jacques (1994) comments as follows, for example, on the situation in OECD countries: Reform of national welfare systems is now under consideration throughout the OECD as government expenditure rises inexorably. Total government spending in these countries has grown from 28.1% of GDP in 1960 to 43.8% in 1990. The biggest single element in this increase has been the cost of pensions, health, unemployment benefits and family support. Social security payments more than doubled during this period, from 7% of GDP to 15.4%. Health expenditure also doubled, from 3.9% to 7.8%. Again, to take a more exotic and less well-known example, Uruguay is known as ‘South America’s first Welfare State’ (Biddulph, 1990). By the beginning of the 1990s, the country faced economic crisis, and the government of Louis Lacalle was desperately struggling to privatize the bloated public sector in the face of popular resistance. According to local reports, Uruguayans had ‘grown quite comfortable with a government that provides salaries of some sort for sixty percent of the population’. However: ‘the cost of maintaining these benefits is out of control. With a

Towards the Disestablishment of State Welfare: A Free Market in Real Welfare

7 billion foreign debt, Uruguay has one of the highest per capita debts in the world.’ Meanwhile, in New Zealand, commonly referred to as the world’s oldest Welfare State, there are similar problems. For the past few years the government has been forced to cut the extravagant welfare budget to the bone in response to a serious economic crisis occasioned primarily by excessive public expenditure (Morgan, 1994).

Monopoly, Bureaucracy and Inhumanity: The Inefficiency of the Welfare State

The modest celebrity occasioned by figuring in an examination paper alongside Titmuss, Townsend, Halsey or Donnison is flattering. Consider, however, its real meaning and its implications.