Study title

The Real Estate Adaptation and Innovation within an integrated Retailing system (REPAIR) project, conducted at the University of Glasgow and University of Sheffield, investigated the changes experienced across the retail cores of five UK cities Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool and Nottingham between 2000 and 2021. The project examined different aspects of the property market and built environment across four separate work streams. The secondary data stored was compiled as part of Work Package A, and allowed for a comparison of property usage and ownership across five case study centres to reveal both similarities and differences over a period of almost two decades (2000-2017). The datasets were created from microlevel data that provide an almost complete picture of building usage and ownership in each case study centre but was constructing by linking data from different public and private sources in a manner not previously attempted. The license agreements prevent sharing of the micro-level data so the stored data is aggregated at different levels of aggregation.The retail sector is crucial to the economic health and vitality of towns and cities and is a core component of the national economy, but is experiencing an ongoing period of change and the challenges faced by centres are being met in different ways, with different outcomes. Consumers are behaving, shopping and using urban centres in new and diverse ways and many retailing centres have experienced falling footfall, retailer closures and a rise in empty retail units. In an attempt to reverse the cycle of decline, centres need to be multi-functional places and policy-makers are encouraging more mixed use development. Large-scale mixed-use re-development of obsolete stock, novel temporary land uses, events and public realm works are being used to try to make urban centres more attractive and increase their competitive edge. Yet, not everyone is experiencing the benefits of these changes. Mistrust,...