ABSTRACT
The retail sector of the economy has been a key area of interest to human geographers for many decades. Not only has it provided the stimulus to considerable empirical, technical and conceptual advances in geography, but it has also provided a major area of analysis where geographers have applied their specialist knowledge to solve real world problems. Given this core position over some decades, the time would seem appropriate to review critically the state of retail geography and perhaps to isolate some of the major gaps in our knowledge of retail systems. From such a benchmark it then becomes possible to advance research and its application within the general sphere of retailing. During the 1930s and 1940s the perceived links between retail activity and urban status led to retailing playing a central role in the burgeoning analyses of urban functions and morphology. Both in North America, through Hoyt's and Proudfoot's pioneering work, and in Europe, in seminal work by Christaller, Smailes and others, retailing was shown, by geographers, to be a major component of the urban environment. Retailing retains this key position within economic and social studies of the city and from this substantial base in the 1930s subsequent studies in retail geography have reflected the swings of the pendulum of geographical philosophy through quantitative and behavioural movements to the more recent welfare-based assertive philosophy of 'relevance'. Although the comparative popularity of the various branches of geography has changed with the swings of the philosophical pendulum, the study of retailing has remained a key component of theoretical and empirical urban geographical analyses.
