Spatial Aspects of the Retail Core: The Case of Greensboro, North Carolina

Spatial Aspects of the Retail Core: The Case of Greensboro, North Carolina Norman W. Schul University of North Carolina at Greensboro Charles R. Hayes Department of Planning, City of Greensboro The study of cities deals with a most complex and interrelated settlement form. Forming the heart or nucleus of each city is the central business district, termed CBD for short, within which are concentrated many of its urban characteristics. In this inner city one finds an example of a settlement form in the United States which represents the whole—the mainstream—in a unique sense. One cannot leave the CBD without sensing that he is leaving the "center of things." In this study the authors propose to examine the inner-workings and features of a CBD, using as a case study the North Carolina Piedmont city of Greensboro, with a focus on the retail core portion of the central business district. It is expected that the findings of this study can also be applied to other urban central place situations for the Southeast and the United States in general. This study involves the analysis of the downtown retail core of Greensboro utilizing Saturday shoppers for the sample. (1) The objectives of the study are: (1) to delimit the Greensboro regional shopping center and its relationship to the retail core; (2) to differentiate downtown store locations and types of patterns exhibited by these stores in the retail core; and (3) to determine the Greensboro hinterland or trade area based on the retail core. The central place to be studied is the retail core and not the central business district per se. The retail core is characterized by the fact that it has commercial areas having a diversity of business establishments at a centralized intersection. (2) This central business district core is the area of most intensive land use and highest concentration of social and economic activities within the urban complex. The CBD has been a much-studied feature by those interested in the planning concept. From the viewpoint of centralization of the city on its focal point of the CBD, one can evolve a model of the city serving as a central place. In this study the focus is on the retail core's relationship with the surrounding area, and thus it is necessary to establish for the Greensboro CBD's retail core the degrees of association with its hinterland as well as its trade area boundaries. The methodology for analysis of the data involves both statistical and cartographical techniques. Empirical techniques also play an important role in this study since there is no body of firm principles satisfactory to explain The Southeastern Geographer Greensboro retail core. Looking westward, May 1964, at time of the study. all of the many and varied spatial aspects of central business districts. THE STUDY AREA. The central business district and that portion of the CBD known as the retail or commercial core has been delimited in many ways. (3) Academically, the problem of CBD delimitation is difficult because of the necessity for formulating principles that will fit every city. In practice, however, the delineation of the retail core in one city for a particular study presents no great challenge. For this study the point of origin for the retail core was selected at the site of the largest department store on the basis of ground floor retail use and then extended in all directions. Although it is possible to define retail use in several ways, this study applied the standard, "Does the use draw people in substantial numbers?" Under this definition such uses as insurance agencies, trailer parks, advertising agencies, and the like were rejected as non-retail although the Standard Industrial Classification Manual classifies these functions as retail. (4) The definition of retail use employed in this study is, therefore, a modified, simplified, and categorized version of the standard industrial classification system. Figure 1 shows the delimitation of the retail core. Data were obtained from two sources: (1) retail land use maps and (2) pedestrian volume counts. Retail land use was readily available from the city of Greensboro's land use maps. Pedestrian volume counts, a measure successfully employed by other planning analysts, were...