Vacant Shops in a Crisis Period – A Morphological Analysis in Portuguese Medium-Sized Cities

ABSTRACT

Vacant shops are an important problem affecting urban areas today, particularly in the wake of the economic crisis. Most strategies to analyse and deal with this issue are related to economic and financial variables. However, the amount of research associating store geography and performance with urban morphology has increased over the past decade. Thus, this research tests the hypothesis that specific morphological features characterize vacant retail sites. Using four Portuguese cities as test-beds and Kernel density analysis to plot spatial patterns, vacant shops were for example positively correlated with low segment betweenness and negatively correlated with block area.

KEYWORDS:

• Vacant shops
• medium-sized cities
• urban morphology
• space syntax
• economic crisis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Space Syntax was pioneered in the 1970s by Prof. Bill Hillier, Prof. Julienne Hanson and colleagues at The Bartlett, University College London. Hillier’s collective works are suggested for further insights on the theories and techniques of Space Syntax.

2. r = 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 1250, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000, 5000, 7500, 10000, 15000 and n.

3. https://emptyshops.wordpress.com/.

4. http://maps.amsterdam.nl/leegstandskaart/.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under Grant [SFRH/BD/45205/2008]. In addition, this research, as part of CEGOT, was partially supported by the European Regional Development Funds, through the COMPETE 2020 – Operational Programme ‘Competitiveness and Internationalization’, under Grant [POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006891]; and by National Funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under Grant [UID/GEO/04084/2013].