ABSTRACT
In the span of two and a quarter centuries, from independence to the present, the physical characteristics of retail development and its relationship with urban form have experienced continual, and sometimes, dramatic change. For much of this period, retail concentrations steadily increased in density and extent; their buildings became ever more complex, sophisticated and laden with consumer amenities. The longstanding tendency towards centralisation began to be broken by the late 1920s, when competing retail facilities began to emerge in outlying areas of cities. Three decades later decentralisation drove development, with an array of new building configurations and siting patterns giving radically different forms to the metropolitan landscape. An architectural language exuding traditional splendour and fantasy gave way to an environment where non-referential modernism prevailed.
