The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Retail in City Centres

Yasaman S. Lashgari and Sina Shahab ()
Additional contact information
Yasaman S. Lashgari: Department of Urban Planning and Design, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran 1983969411, Iran
Sina Shahab: School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3WT, UK

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 18, 1-13

Abstract: Over the past few decades, city centres and their retail spaces have undergone significant changes and have struggled to remain economically viable. The COVID-19 pandemic and the public health response to the crisis have exacerbated this situation and posed a serious challenge to the already economically struggling city centres. Recommendations for how city centres should respond to the current crisis are urgently needed, but despite this, few studies have focused on the impact of COVID-19 on retailing in city centres. This paper conducts a systematic review to provide a better understanding of how retail in city centres has been affected by the pandemic. It also offers insights to support better decision making about the future of retailing in city centres and provides recommendations for ensuring a sustainable future for city centres. The review, conducted between the 20th of November 2021 and the 20th of January 2022, shows that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health response have intensified some considerable changes in customer preferences and the role of city centres. As a result of these changes, more retailers have adopted multichannel retailing and repositioning strategies. This paper concludes that in order to create vibrant and sustainable city centres post-pandemic, decision makers should support the repurposing of vacant and underperforming retail spaces, promote an experience economy, and create episodic retail spaces.

Keywords: city centre; retail; COVID-19; pandemic; town centre; high street; urban planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11463/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11463/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:18:p:11463-:d:913668

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().