The book you are about to begin reading is the most comprehensive and expansive ever written on the subject of retail real estate development. It is a testament to a life-long patient search by its author, Bob Gibbs, to first decipher contemporary retail theory in all its dimensions and complexities and then to have it delivered as a series of new projects. It is organized in concise essays and accessible language that together manage to capture the entire subject matter from retailing fundamentals and business models, to the architectural and urban design of shopping center types, to best practices in project financing, leasing and operating. Case studies of successful recent examples of retail projects and places, in both historic city centers and new towns, validate his theoretical arguments.

A casual observation of the American landscape instantly conveys the contributions of the retail trade to making urban places beautiful, prosperous and livable. On a daily basis, all of us visit the commercial centers of the cities where we live or visit, buying food at markets, patronizing stores, eating in restaurants or just enjoying ourselves in public. The location of these retail places relative to our home base, the effortless serial presentation of their store offerings, the artfulness of their particular design and the convenience of accessing them and parking near them encourage us to use them once and to continue using them over time. The more of us that visit these centers, and the more often, the more established they become and the more essential to the economy of their cities. Commercial development has been and continuous to be synonymous with the process of urbanization itself. 

If privacy in cities is associated with a range of residential and neighborhood types, community is most often linked with districts and corridors whose public realm is dominated by commercial interests. Together, these key ingredients of the American city have ensured the ongoing survival and prosperity of people on this continent. Our settlements were founded and continue to evolve their urban patterns according to a rational and efficient distribution of their residential and commercial urban patterns.
 
Hamlets and small towns are located closest to the land being used for agriculture and raising animals. Larger towns flourish among smaller settlements, providing access to daily and weekly markets. Some of these have evolved into regional cities that offer advanced and unique products and services to sets of towns in their orbit. And finally, and as world trade and political power have been consolidated under the influence of larger nations, metropolitan centers grow in locations that maximize commercial exchange.

Crucially, every one of these settlement types includes a commercial dimension; the larger and more complex the settlement, the larger its markets and the more extensive its commercial prominence. The residents of hamlets and small towns can sustain themselves by access to small local stores. Town stores serve the needs of their residents as well as those of smaller surrounding settlements. City stores service their residents and are available to fulfill the shopping needs of the residents of the towns surrounding them. Metropolitan centers cater to the tastes and needs of the citizens within their region in consuming both local and imported goods from all over the world. 

The influence of commercial and retail activity on the specific physical character of all of these traditional settlement types is pervasive. The retail trade thrives in locations that are accessible and visible. The transportation of goods to the market, and of people to specific marketplaces, demands appropriate transportation networks. Buying and selling is public-space- and mixed-use-building sensitive. The dimensions, character and scale of public space, including thoroughfares, attracts people to visit and to revisit, not only for the benefit of a purchase or two, but also to engage in social interaction and entertainment. Continuous ground floors of buildings presented as stores satiate the human need for convenience and variety. The act of buying and selling over time generates a highly entrepreneurial population. A successful commercial sector advances the prosperity of municipalities and the regions surrounding them. 

This tried and true pattern of urbanism was challenged and heavily disturbed post-1945 by a novel theory of city-making that emphasized the prominence of the automobile over pedestrians, the use of land by large swaths of isolated singular activities, the design of oversized buildings for single use, the erosion of public space and the concentration of commercial activity in the hands of corporations rather than single store owners.

Over the next fifty years, this development theory, based on the modernist urbanism then in fashion, was implemented through two interrelated strategies: large-scale, capital-intensive, brand-store-centered shopping centers were located in open suburban sites and precipitated a massive exodus of urbanites to the suburbs. They may have not been the root cause of sprawl, but certainly became a key dimension of the vast scale and short-term economic success of suburbia. Sprawl hastened the abandonment of main streets and city centers with their small-scale, personal and diverse retail and commercial offerings, in favor of peripheral chain store malls. The attempt to fix this decline through urban renewal turned out to be even more devastating. It resulted in the massive demolition of the traditional commercial centers and the economic collapse of the core of almost every major American city. Reconstruction, according to the dictates and physical patterns of architectural modernism, became the engine for the emergence of ‘slaburbia.’ During our lifetime, suburbia and ‘slaburbia’ have together come close to destroying nearly 400 years of city-making in the United States. 

Since the early 1990s a set of new ideas have come to dominate the American planning and development scene. Under a variety of names—The New Urbanism, Smart Growth, Livable Cities—a small number of responsible professionals in many allied fields have banded together to frame a new theory and practice for regenerating American cities and undoing the damage of Modernist urbanism. According to this movement, stopping the patterns of sprawl development, safeguarding the open countryside and infilling within existing metropolitan boundaries are the key objectives for maintaining the character, vitality and economic prominence of cities. 

Bob Gibbs has been a leader among New Urbanists since the inception of the Congress for the New Urbanism. His contributions to this cause as an author and consultant have been remarkable. He is by far the most prominent advocate for reforming retail planning and development in order to return American cities to economic and physical prominence. 

Three specific dimensions of his work in retail design and planning have also become general foundations of New Urbanist thinking: people-centeredness, a focus on place-making and an emphasis on implementation through the private market; designing shopping districts that offer the goods and services sought out and desired by their communities in an inspired urban and architectural form that people understand, are familiar with and thrive in; and building and maintainence by private interests highly motivated to create and maintain economic efficiency and value in the long term.
 
Whether you are an architect, engineer, planner, elected official, city staff member or citizen-advocate, this book is essential reading for you. It may allow you to return your city to its prewar market prominence. It may help you decide on whether a forthcoming project diminishes or improves its economic performance. It may encourage you to improve your main street and neighborhood or city center. It may provide real help in framing new, profitable and transformative projects for your community. 

In all cases, and because of its emphasis on place making, Bob Gibbs’s insights on urban retail planning will certainly improve the quality of your community by enriching your shopping options and creating places that attract you and your fellow citizens in order to live a richer and more pleasant life.

Originally published in Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development, by Robert J. Gibbs (Wiley, 2011).