Shop - New Retail Space For London

What sort of shopping do Londoners want?

With campaigns against cloned high streets, the popularity of farmers’ markets and the growing interest in local produce you might wonder whether we need new shopping malls – yet Brent Cross is planned to expand, Westfield at White City is soon to open, a major new centre is the focus of Stratford City and the shopping centre at Canary Wharf is a regional success story. As London’s population grows we will need more shops to meet demand - but what sort of shops do we want and are the planners getting the balance right?

Excerpt from the introduction

London's retail market is on the eve of an extraordinary Period of growth that produce both opportunities and challenges in equal measure. The expected boom is highlighted in a major report published by GLA Economics towards the end of 2006. One set of figures alone spells out what lies ahead. Spending levels on comparison goods, says the GLA, are forecast to rise from 19bn in 2001 to nearly 39bn by 2018. This equates to annual growth of 4.8%. Existing retail space in the capital will, however, only have the capacity to cope with a 2.5% growth in spending.

So a clear message quickly emerges. New space - and a lot of it- is going to be needed for London to core with its consumer boom.Across the city major developments are already starting to come through, others are well advanced and some are still at the planning stage. Most notably, there's the 'big twosome'- White City (now Westfield London) is well advanced in its huge transformation of a key site in west London and Stratford City, which will play a powerful role in regenerating a neglected part of east London. As well as their impacts on their respective markets, being neatly located on opposite sides of the capital there is also much speculation about the likely impact of these giant schemes on the established central London retail circuit.