This report looks at the potential impacts autonomous vehicle deployment could have on parking demand and how that might impact urban development. The study focused on three distinct areas of San Francisco. The research found that, contrary to headlines about AV impacts on parking, achieving large reductions in parking demand based on AV deployment will not be easy. To achieve significant parking reductions, AVs would need to be shared (not privately owned), pooled (riders willing to pick up other passengers along the way), have widespread geographic deployment (across entire metropolitan areas), and would need to complement high-capacity transit. Without all or most of these factors, parking demand may only by marginally impacted by AV deployment. The study also found that if parking demand could be reduced, different areas of the city would see quite different results. While many areas in San Francisco would see minimal development impacts as parking is not currently a significant driver or limiter of development, more auto-dominated areas could see substantial impacts if parking demand could be reduced by more than 40%. This raises interesting questions of how these levels of parking demand reduction might impact more auto-dominated and suburban areas throughout the country. This research was funded by Waymo.

How is the COVID-19 pandemic changing urban living? In this paper, we explore the landscape of COVID-19 disruptions to date on land use and real estate, urban design, building design, transportation, e-commerce and retail, and goods delivery. We also highlight the longer-term questions and potential ongoing impacts COVID-19 might have on the built environment.

Urbano has been developed by Cornell University and other organizations. This software has some special features like download geospatial data, import and aggregate data, lookup and modify metadata, routing in different modes, analyze amenities and streets, integrated cad workflow, etc. Also, is useful to quantify urban parameters like amenity demand, streetscore, amenityscore and walkscore. It has a friendly interface to visualize different urban planning parameters.

Make pedestrian ways, particularly sidewalks, first class members of an open data transportation network. The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project has made available extensive, user-contributed open data on transportation networks, providing the basis for many use cases and downstream activities, including rich analytics, travel route optimization, city planning, and disaster relief. Sidewalks in the built environment have generally been treated an addendum to streets, failing to serve people with limited mobility.

This article identifies how changing emerging technologies and consumer behavior and priorities will influence retail. These trends include preferences for experiences over things, faster delivery options, and brand identity.

This article discusses what makes a retail experience meaningful. Executives in retail design, experience, and real estate agreed that the main elements of meaningful retail experience are localization, service, and shareability.

This article provides a list of retail store closings including department stores, specialty retailers, grocery stores, and food service chains.

Nordstrom plans to open smaller stores in dense urban areas that have no inventory and instead have experiences and services such as a seamstress, a nail salon and a bar.

This article examines how consumer behavior in retail has shifted to a trend of making online purchases and picking them up in stores. It identifies the retailers that have been most successful with this trend and makes investment recommendations.

The closures of brick-and-mortar stores are causing towns in the U.S. to miss out on sales, income, and property taxes that local governments rely on for revenue.

“This research examines office parking at a series of case study sites in suburban Southern California, identifying its impact on travel behavior, development density, development cost, and urban design.”

“Using the number of square feet leased in similar center types, data shows a cyclic shift from more traditional tenants – such as apparel – to necessity-based and experiential tenants.”

Many developers are trying to keep their malls relevant as traditional big-box retailers announce store closures. This articles highlights five examples of malls around the U.S. that have plans to reinvent themselves as mixed use and experiential destinations.

Many traditional malls have come up with creative ways to transform themselves to stay relevant in the 21st century and maintain sources of revenue as store closures rise. The typical malls with large atriums, department stores, food courts, and parking lots are finding new uses for these spaces including fitness centers, apartments, event spaces, markets, and mini theme parks.

2019 saw a record number of retail store closings, however the actual retail square footage was not proportionally impacted. This emerging trend is due to smaller tenants opening more stores and retailers shedding space in order to improve sales productivity.

The impacts of e-commerce and changing consumer behaviors have caused brick and mortar retailers to shift their business models and reduce store square footage.

Traditionally massive big box store retailers like Target and Dollar General are opening smaller versions of their stores in urban areas and college campuses to bring in new customers that were previously too far away from their bigger suburban stores.

A smaller, “planning studio” style Ikea store is opening in Manhattan. This downtown NYC version acts solely as a showroom, without the warehouse of build-it-yourself products.

Credit Suisse predicts that as many as 25% of U.S. malls will close by 2022 due to the rise of e-commerce, discount chains, retail bankruptcies and store closings.

This article provides a complete list of all stores planning to close in 2019.

The invention of the internet introduced a new typology to the marketplace, the online retailer. Omnichannel retail strategies - where a retailer operates through both physical locations and online sales - have become a necessity in today’s market.

Open source simulation platform for supporting planning and analysis of urban development, incorporating the interactions between land use, transportation, the economy, and the environment.

Urban Footprint provides a cloud-based urban planning software built by urban planners and designers who truly understand planning needs. Service includes actionable data, scenario building, and multi-metric analysis.

Urban population movement simulation tool for strategic planning.

Open source and free, web-based urban design platform.

Open-access scenario planning package that allows users to analyze how their community's current growth pattern and future decisions impacting growth will impact a range of measures from public health, fiscal resiliency and environmental sustainability.

Bicycle and pedestrian counting technical equipment and consulting services.

Citilabs offers a number of analytical and visualization products to aid in modeling population movement, scenario planning, and transit operations.

BikeAble can use mapping technology to model the low-stress bike route options available from any origin to any destination. Doing this for a large number of origins and destinations allows us to aggregate the results to show not just how connected one household is to key destinations, but how well connected an entire community is.

The American retail sector is undergoing a long-term structural shift away from small “mom-and-pop” stores and toward national chains. Retail establishments have gotten larger and more concentrated; the mass-market merchandisers of the later twentieth century continued a trend toward consolidation of the retail sector into national chains operating large stores that started before their widespread emergence. In the late twentieth century, Wal-Mart emerged as the world’s most important (and controversial) retailer. The evidence on Wal-Mart’s effects on retail employment suggests either mild positive or mild negative effects, but Wal-Mart’s effect on prices suggests increases in real income.

The article describes the trend of mall development strategy and how the now model of development is integrated into the new lifestyle and space of community.

A new era of shopping centers is upon us. They’re beginning to look and function less like traditional malls and more like lifestyle centers with a strong community vibe.

As we build new developments, are we still short on parking? Parking minimums have created endless hot, asphalt deserts in our developments and now cities are working to reverse these laws.

This report describes a shoppers trip and what the planner may be most interested in about it as well as street design and it's accommodation for all activities that may need to happen throughout the day.

In the first year since Amazon bought Whole Foods, two large grocers are already beginning to suffer and make drastic cuts.

This article explores the rate of retail store closures, its effects on employment, and the role of economy market forces on the changes.

This white paper will discuss the non-technological trends logistics managers much know and then will hone in on the technologies that will impact the logistics in 2018.

A synopsis of how Walmart plans to increase services and capacity in order to continue to compete with Amazon.

The news talks about Amazon expand their warehouses (and other facilities) across 382 metropolitan areas in US and how the supply chain may impact local development.

To gain a deeper understanding of retailers’ focus, concerns and investment plans, Zebra conducted a global research study across a wide spectrum of retail segments, including: specialty stores, department stores, apparel merchants, supermarkets, electronics, home improvement and drugstore chains. The results of this study are shared in this 2017 Retail Vision Study.

Experts predict Amazon will use the Whole Foods stores, in part, as hubs for grocery pick-up and delivery, helping Amazon resolve the “last mile” dilemma." Overall, it should create opportunity in real estate but take more strategy.

The future of department stores in suburban malls is grim, this article explains the rising trends and what is causing the push.

This article explains to us the reasons Amazon bought Whole Foods - working to create a rather seamless day-to-day operation for its customer base.

This article discuss the changing consumer behaviors and the some e-commerce business' support for retails can help brick-and-mortar retail grow.

Target acquires delivery service Shipt for $550 million, this article explains how its going and how they match up to other delivery options.

In an effort to keep up with competitor Amazon, Walmart partners with delivery company Postmastes to offer same-day grocery delivery to more US households.

This article explores the possible motives for online retailers to open up physical stores.

Retail in the U.S. is going through some hardships. There is too much and the shopping trip is the same each time you go. Millennial's are putting retail into a head spin wanting more, quicker and for better prices with less hassle. For these retailer sot keep up with the wants and needs of it's customer base, they're going to have to make some changes.

The amount of retail space going dark in 2018 is on pace to break a record, as companies with massive floor plans are either trimming back their store counts or liquidating entirely.

In 2013, eyewear e-commerce pioneer Warby Parker opened its first retail store in SoHo with fairly low expectations. In 2015, that store still occasionally had a line out the door on weekends, and Warby Parker had 12 retail locations across the country, with plans to open seven more before the end of the year. This article explores why the online-native eyewear retailer chose to open so many stores in such a short period of time.

The questionable acquisition of Jet.com by Walmart last year has seemed to pay off, this article explains the purchase and their success since.

Amazon agreed to buy the upscale grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.4 billion, in a deal that will instantly transform the company that pioneered online shopping into a merchant with physical outposts in hundreds of neighborhoods across the country.

Nordstrom has officially opened its first store without inventory, testing a new format for the department store chain called Nordstrom Local.

This article lays out the share of the market Amazon versus its competitors hold and the impacts its growth is having.

This article mentions the visible downfall of malls and large stores like Sears and Toys R Us, but it highlights how these stores have impacted individuals and their stories from growing up visiting them.

Amazon's physical retail strategy is coming into focus, and just like the company's e-commerce business, it's focused on convenience. Perhaps the best way to make things more convenient for customers is to shorten the time it takes for them to complete a shopping trip.

Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to take space in a first-of-its-kind three-story warehouse, a new type of distribution center that could reduce delivery times in congested cities to hours rather than days. While common in densely-populated Asian and European cities, modern warehouses with multiple floors have been absent until recently in the U.S., where higher land and construction costs deterred developers. But now that more retailers are racing to deliver more same-day packages, developers are starting to build the multistory fulfillment centers needed to speed delivery in congested cities.

As e-commerce sales march ahead of in-store sales, the major issue discussed at the Retail Industry Leaders Association’s (RILA) Retail Supply Chain Conference: Logistics 2013 was best practices for developing and executing an omni-channel distribution strategy. And real estate—particularly distribution centers (DCs)—is a significant part of the process. This article reviews the main questions asked during the conference.

“Zombie malls,” as they are known, are increasingly dotting the suburban landscape. The lights are on, the escalators keep moving, but their purpose in life has gone. Burlington Center has less than 20 tenants — including a Sears and a Foot Locker — but once had more than 100.

As retail went digital, the idea was, physical space would become redundant. But while pivoting to a new digital paradigm hasn’t been easy, the retail industry’s ability to adapt has been notable and impressive. In fact, as cities grow and new hordes of consumers flock to establish themselves in urban communities, opportunities for innovation are emerging that suggest brick-and-mortar may be the pillar of a new retail era." This article primarily talks about the urbanization and the consumer, and the rebirth of brick-and-mortar.

It’s nothing short of a revolution, and the stakes have never been higher for retailers and consumer goods companies. Our Total Retail survey results, together with 2015 fourth-quarter retail results around the world, point to 2016 as a watershed for many of the trends that have been percolating over the past few years. From the unmistakable desire to be a member of a specialized retail community to buying more on their mobile phones, from becoming more reliant on social media to demanding a more service-focused and knowledgeable store employee, global consumers are pushing the boundaries of what shopping means.

Ever since Amazon began selling books online in 1995, retailers — and plenty of other commentators — have been asking what role, if any, physical stores might play in the retail arena. Some have gone so far as to predict the ultimate demise of stores, and others expound the virtues of various hybrid omnichannel solutions. This report explores where things stand in retail in 2017.

This article explores the different ways retailers might engage with their customers in the future as we shift into an evermore digital-physical hybrid world.

We are long past the point of discussing how technology has interrupted our lives and changed our perspective of the world. We are now in the post-disruption era, and in many sectors including retail, a new normal is emerging. We are seeing that the most successful retailers are using both online and offline approaches. The key is the critical balance between the efficiency of online with the engagement of offline.

A year after shutting all its U.S. stores, Toys R Us is making a comeback. The international chain, which filed for bankruptcy in 2017, is opening two mall stores this holiday season and bringing back its website. But don’t expect the Toys R Us you’re used to. 'We’re reinventing Toys R Us to make it fun and interactive for kids and parents.'

This web page presents a 2016 overview of the U.S. retail industry and all relevant information, facts, research, data and trivia related to the U.S. retail industry. It provides the definition of the U.S. retail industry, the size of the U.S. retail industry, and the types of retailing and retailers that comprise the U.S. retail industry. Also provides links to the most current info, facts, research, data, and trivia about the largest U.S. retail chains.