Authors

Krinitsyna Evgeniya V.
THE EFFECT OF A LARGE PERIPHERAL SHOPPING CENTRE ON THE INTRACITY INFRASTRUCTURE OF SUCH CENTERS

Architecton: Proceedings of Higher Education №4 (36) December, 2011

Western European and Russian approaches to the issue of urban centres The principles underlying the arrangement of shopping centres and services in city fabric influence the quality of life. Currently, the most significant element of the shopping and service infrastructure in big cities, including Ekaterinburg, is major shopping centres. The strategic project «Shopping Sites of Ekaterinburg» provides for an optimized system of shopping centres of different type in the city considering the role of Ekaterinburg as the centre of an agglomeration and excluding excessive traffic from the city centre by laying them out peripherally.

Comparison of Western European and contemporary Russian approaches to the development of shopping and services networks in city fabric has enabled us to identify a number of differences. Western European experience suggests that a major peripheral shopping mall covers consumers from both central and remote city districts, drawing over the clientele from existing centrally located retailers, which has a negative effect on the intracity shopping infrastructure and on the image and appeal of the city centre.

To verify this assumption, a survey has been carried out at Ekaterinburg’s peripheral shopping mall ‘MEGA’.

To minimize the effect of such adverse effects on the centrally located shopping centres, the authors propose to exclude the sale of «centre-relevant» goods and foodstuffs, limiting the shopping to exclusively «centre-irrelevant» goods, and, whenever possible, reconsider the shopping network concept of Ekaterinburg. A legal instrument for regulating the range of goods and shopping areas should be the planning regulations of the city.

It is recommended that major peripheral shopping malls intended to serve exclusively customers from outside the city should be located at a distance of 25 km from the city boundaries.