Table of Contents

Introduction: The Urban Retail Predicament
Conrad Kickert and Emily Talen

Retail Trends and Transformations

The Life and Death of Retail: Insights from Firm Demography
Luc Anselin and Irene Farah

The Ups and Downs of Retail, 2000–2015
Kevin Credit, Irene Farah, and Luc Anselin

Commercial Gentrification: What Happens to Businesses and Services when the Neighborhood Changes?
Rachel Meltzer

The Case of E-Commerce

Bricks and Clicks
Liz Mack

The Changing Demand for Urban Retail Space: Evidence from Canada
Christopher Daniel and Tony Hernandez

Online Sales and the British Urban Retail Hierarchy
Colin Jones

The Survival of Mom-and-Pops

Small Business Survival: How and Why?
Vikas Mehta

Can Mom and Pop Stores Survive? A Survey of Small Retailers in Chicago
Emily Talen

What’s in a Chain?: On Hipness, Corporate Stores, and False Dichotomies in Urban Life
Jeffrey Nathaniel Parker

Retail, Place, and Place-Making

Retail Scenes
Hyesun Jeong and Terry Clark

Main Street Morphology, Adaptability, and Resilience
Rosa Danenberg

Retail in the Mix
Matthew Carmona

Toward Solutions

Curating Main Streets: The Factors of Success
Michael W. Mehaffy and Tigran Haas

The Spatial Logic of Urban Retail
Conrad Kickert

The Future of American Urban Retail Real Estate
Heather Arnold

Conclusion: Urban Retail Redefined
Conrad Kickert and Emily Talen

About the Author

Conrad Kickert is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Buffalo.

Emily Talen is a professor in the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.

Reviews

"Conrad Kickert, Emily Talen, and a group of interdisciplinary contributors bring together a timely and much-needed discussion of the future of urban retail. From shocks caused by e-commerce and COVID-19 to the gradually changing demographic realitiesand preferences for urban amenities, the book offers an indispensable compass for navigating not the demise but the twenty-first-century reorientation of urban street life."--Andres Sevtsuk, Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Even the heartiest of main streets have been challenged by a harsh mix of retail shifts, gentrification, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and human foibles. This lovely volume offers us sound analysis and careful advice - main street lovers will find it just what they need to imagine a path forward!"--Mindy Thompson Fullilove, author of Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All