The end of monofunctional retail areas

Abstract

Changing consumer shopping trends in the last two decades and the impact of COVID-19 in 2020-2021, has led to more structural vacancy in supportive monofunctional retail areas. Since supportive monofunctional retail areas are less resilient on the long term compared to retail areas in city centres, integrated redevelopment of such areas is required to prevent further decay and add new value. Dutch municipalities majorly rely on market forces to stimulate redevelopment. Nevertheless, this does not result in desired outcomes. Different researches conclude that the local municipality has to fulfil a leading role in this redevelopment in order to achieve the desired outcome. This research focusses on how this leading role is defined and how the corporation between the local municipality and private property owners can be improved. Therefore, the following research question is formulated; How can the municipal leading role be defined during the redevelopment initiating phase and what improvements can be made in the decision-making process between the municipality and private property owners of retail space for the redevelopment to mixed-use areas? This research consists of a literature research and an empirical research to answer this question. The literature research provides an investigation of the initiative phase of project development, possibilities in organisational structures and the definition of decision-making. The empirical research consist of a case study considering a decaying monofunctional retail area with redevelopment in prospect. Stakeholder interviews are used as the main data source to investigate the project approach, organisational structure and decision-making process between the municipality and private property owners. The most important finding is that a key element of the municipal leading role was the proactive approach to the development of a masterplan for the case area in order to stimulate private stakeholder involvement.