Place-making: new approaches to commercial and retail centres

Place-making issues include:

• wishful v. reality planning
• design based on what works
• street profile
• controlling signage
• appropriate architecture
• public space issues

Only in the most dense urban environment do you have enough population to support a retail development. For a typical neighbourhood centre, you would have only 5% within reasonable walking distance - 95% have to come in other ways and in the US that means cars. So you have to plan for it. It's a design problem. It's a land assembly problem. It's the single biggest thing that affects the creation of an urban retail space. You can usually only overcome that with municipal help.

It's not just retail - it's creating urban spaces.