Abstract
This paper considers an aspect of urban retail structural organization which has received relatively little attention in the past, namely, the quality characteristics of elements of the intra-urban retailing system. At the outset, the overall significance of quality variations within intra-urban central place systems, the factors contributing to retail quality levels and the criteria which may be employed to assess these are examined. Subsequently, the findings of an empirical study of the nature of variations in the assessed quality levels of shopping centres in Stockport are presented, employing a modified version of a quality grading scheme originally devised by Davies (1968). The quality characteristics of retail areas are shown to vary according to their distance from the town centre, position in the intra-urban retail hierarchy, period of development, location with respect to the road network, morphological attributes, fabric contiguity and the socio-economic character of their tributary areas. The implications of these findings are examined in relation to the distinction between nucleations and ribbons, the existence of income-related subcomponents within the urban business pattern and the evolution of sound theories and models of the structure of British urban retailing systems.
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