The importance of Urban Anchors: shopping centres in the inner city

For a long time, the majority of new shopping centres were built on greenfield sites, on the outskirts of urban areas. The disadvantages of this traditional approach are well known: the customers drifted away; the city centres slowly became less used by the city inhabitants. In many towns and cities the former centres even threatened to become totally inefficient. In the last few years there has been a change in this trend.

While almost a quarter of all new shopping centres in …