ABSTRACT
The shopping centre, over the last 30 years, has become an established feature of urban structure in countries with widely divergent urban policies. The essence of the shopping centre lies in the concept of a managed and controlled retail environment. Both the internal organisation and the operation of the shopping centre are managed by the developer or owner, with tenant mix, design, promotion, security, maintenance and many other of the operational features, specifically controlled and administered. The purpose of this management and administration generally is the maximisation of the retail power of the centre as a whole. Increasingly, because this retail power is now considerable within urban areas, the agencies responsible for overall urban management are themselves looking for ways to control, maybe limit, but certainly direct this power, such that social costs do not result from the potential abuse of economic power. Thus, attempts are made by urban government to control location, to exert influence on operations, to encourage environmentally acceptable designs, to ensure safe construction, to create a balanced provision of retail facilities and to manage the catalytic processes which shopping centres can exert. Controls therefore are exerted not only internally on the shopping centre as an economic entity, but also externally on the shopping centre as an element of the environment. The chapters in this book illustrate the variety of these internal and external controls, their operation and their effects.
