Shopping - in the city?

Wolfgang Christ
Consumption culture and spatial structure - current developments in the USA and Great Britain

Abstract

The digitalization of the information and communication culture encounters the renaissance of traditional urban typologies in Europe and the USA. But at the same time the trading culture, which is historically closely entwined with it, is in the process of giving up its topological relationship in favour of virtual spaces. The current development in the USA and in Great Britain makes diametrically opposed perspectives for the future of urban centres apparent: in America the trade and real estate economy participates actively in the "urban turn" through a re-orientation towards the street as a medium for mobility, stay and communication. The cities are revising the planning culture in favour of functional integration and form-based spatial quality. In Great Britain the "City Centre"-projects in the course of the "Urban Renaissance"-strategy of the 1990’s have led to exemplary new inner city neighbourhoods. But there is the tendency that the online trading industry, which has advanced world-wide, is in the process of attracting 50% of retail turnover. The death of the High Street is a realistic assumption. The centre of the city and society must be reconfigured.