Heuristic for the localization of new shops based on business and social criteria

Abstract

The last financial crisis and the globalisation of the retail industry resulted to a massive close of local shops which leads to an important proportion of unoccupied space in the city. The desertification of the urban economic environment is not only a business issue discouraging the potential investments but also a social problem of security or quality of urban life. Different solutions exist: from the top-down and historical approach based on subsidies to the bottom-up and its different options: the urban entrepreneurship or a more temporary form called successively ‘pop-up’, ‘second-hand’ or ‘urban pioneers’. Nevertheless, all these solutions have in common that the location is an important criteria to achieve a market-led regeneration of the city. Our paper consists on developing a heuristic that prioritises the opening of new shops amongst the void locations based on a business and social criteria. Our results corroborate the convergence of the social, business and technology sciences. They provide a method and a tool for the city managers to monitor and manage the opening of new shops. Included in the policy of the smart city, they allow to decrease the risks of uniformity, ‘mono-business activity’ and gentrification of the neighbourhood.