Abstract
Changes in consumer shopping behavior and in retail spaces, such as shopping malls, department stores and e-commerce, have modified localization models of traditional retail shops, also affecting urban fabric and spatial distribution of urban rent. Even city centers have undergone significant transformations or even decline, especially if local economic system and real estate market are weak and recessionary. A significant amount of commercial properties may have long vacancy due to excess supply, since many traditional shops close their business because they are no longer competitive and, moreover, there is no immediate takeover by new tenants. The decline of central urban areas depends on the interaction of multiple economic, social and cultural factors, but it can be countered by urban policies oriented not only to physical redevelopment of urban fabric, but also to social cohesion and multiculturalism. Migrants bearers of varied cultural values, coming from different continents and settling permanently in the Italian cities, have rented some of these empty properties by locating retail shops specifically oriented to their own communities or also to the citizens needs. The presence of migrants contributes, indeed, to support the retail real estate demand, to mitigate the minus-valorization of real estate capital and also to contain the revenues contraction. This phenomenon has been analyzed in some streets of the historic centre of Palermo that are traditionally shopping areas and have become the privileged place for locating retail shops managed by immigrants.
Highlights
As a complex effect of economic globalization process, the spreading of new forms of retail and other services deeply etches on the transformation of cities and urban regions
In addition the great dimension of malls has really caused the decline of retail, which was traditionally dislocated in various shops or in open-air markets of the urban fabric and of the historic centre, with controversial consequences regarding the real increase of employees in the trade sector, publicized as one of obtained benefits1
Even the central areas of the city and the high streets may suffer a relative decline with long vacancy time caused by excess supply of retail property for rent
Summary
As a complex effect of economic globalization process, the spreading of new forms of retail and other services (like shopping mall and, more recently, e-commerce websites) deeply etches on the transformation of cities and urban regions. To proliferation of contacts, public spaces and virtual markets, the choices of immigrants’ location in degraded urban areas, where housing and shops are inexpensive, can be considered as opportunities for a kind of urban revitalization that is instead anchored on the multicultural relationships and the city material space From this perspective, the research aims at investigating in which terms the presence of migrants helps to sustain commercial real estate demand and contain annuities decrease, by analysing the case of the historic centre of Palermo in a frame of interdependent effects by the proliferation of mega stores or malls in other parts of the city and by the spread of e-commerce in the virtual space. The study underlines the multicultural values emerging by the slow building process of public space as a result of social interactions, which are rooted in the urban fabric, in comparison with the closed and predetermined space of the malls
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