Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros3Retail geography and the building...

Retail geography and the building of a sustainable city

Some thoughts from the French case
Philippe Dugot

Résumés

Nombre de questionnements découlant du développement durable demeurent pertinents, même si la notion est légitimement discutée dans la communauté des géographes. Cet article se propose de se centrer sur les acteurs et modalités de la fabrique d’une ville durable appuyée sur une approche sectorielle : le commerce de détail pris comme élément économique et fonction urbaine importante. Après une réflexion sur l’instrumentalisation fréquente de la durabilité, il s’agit de démontrer la fertilité de l’approche croisée entre de nombreux aspects de la crise urbaine et les modalités de la modernisation du commerce depuis les années 1960. L’article vise ensuite à discuter les réponses urbanistiques données. Cela conduit à ouvrir le débat sur la légitimité de l’action publique vs les intérêts et outils des entreprises privées. Cet article s’inscrit dans le cas français. Les singularités de celui-ci sont rappelées. Mais les analyses et questionnements peuvent concerner d’autres contextes urbains.

Haut de page

Texte intégral

Introduction

  • 1 “Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromisi (...)

1Even starting from the “historic” definition of sustainable development1, geographers have an ambivalent relationship with the idea of sustainable development. Some have expressed reticence about the lack of any theoretical bedrock for the notion of sustainable development, starting with the linking of development—therefore growth—and sustainability. Certain “apostles” of economic shrinkage have in fact not hesitated to openly declare, “down with sustainable development” (Latouche, 2003). All the more so since the French term for sustainable, “durable,” is open to misuse. Indeed, this translation of the English term “sustainable” by that of “durability” opens the door to a broadening, not to say a corruption, of its proper use. Standard territorial development policies, portrayed as creating jobs, are thereby defined as “durable/sustainable.” This opens the door even wider to a “weak sustainability” made up of small steps or even a self-definition, rather than aiding a paradigm shift. It is therefore not surprising that the theme remains a hot topic because of the weakness of what some describe as “soft doxa” (Lévy and Lussault, 2003).

2The initial intellectual impetus stays seductive because it places societal analysis at the crossroads of economic, social and environmental issues. And geographers are now sufficiently well equipped to tackle and manage the complexity of this encounter. The territorial approach allows diagnoses and treatment options even in varying contexts. The geography of retail could not remain indifferent, especially since the economic sphere has taken hold of sustainability in its entrepreneurial strategy. These actions can be filed under four entries: products for sale, corporate social responsibility (CSR), the design and requalification of retail outlets (from boutiques to shopping centres) and a return to localism. These four entries are inseparable: working on a sustainable business from the geographer’s point of view, under whichever entry, means considering the relevant entry as part of a complex whole. Taken as a starting point of the study of the relationship between retail trade and sustainable development, the urban issue leads us to reflect on this relationship, first of all, on an urban organisational scale and to consider the activity as one function among many others. Retail Trade is characterised by land coverage, contributes to the construction of the urban landscape and it generates logistical, customer and worker flows. But can we leave aside other lines of inquiry such as the nature of retail establishments? This leads us to look into the business’s strategy, starting with what is sold: where do the products come from? Under what conditions are they produced? The range and scale of the businesses can mean that their value chains reach around the world, ultimately reconnecting with the essential spectrum of thinking around sustainability—the planet.

  • 2 Association pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture Paysanne (Association for the Maintenance of “Peas (...)

3A quick synopsis of the work carried out over the last 15 years in the field of retail geography shows that two entries have been favoured by geographers—that of urban retail planning and that of products for sale. A part of retail geography focuses on the issue of shortening of economic circuits. Geographers, mostly rural specialists, are doing work on the rise of short circuits and the AMAPs2 (Boivin, 2010; Pilleboue and Pouzenc, 2007). Here, we will focus on the field of urban planning through a diagnosis of retail. The aim is to synthesize a reflection on the existing relationship, to be built or even rebuilt, between retail trade and the city from the perspective of a questioning around sustainable urban development. This work is part of the context of a French modernization that has violently disrupted the commercial forms of consumption of food, personal goods and household equipment since the 1960s. The result is a problematic urban legacy. Beyond the singularity of the French case, conclusions and questions can nevertheless be included in other national contexts confronted with an often-destabilizing commercial modernization.

4This article is divided into five parts. In a first part, it is necessary to return to the cautiously welcomed afforded to sustainable development by geographers. These preliminary hesitations, understandable in the context of the study of an economic sector whose objectives seem to contradict the idea of sustainable development, have nevertheless been lifted. In a second, we will show how much retail trade has a role to play in the analysis of the sustainable city. After showing how French modernity has singularly shattered business location within and between cities, the third part will show and reviews the forms and tools put forward to progress towards a so-called sustainable town planning. The following part will question the legitimacy of the various players in commercial town planning to claim to build a sustainable city. A concluding part questions the ideological dimension of the subject.

Retail geography face to sustainable development

5The economic, territorial and landscape evidence of a consumer society has led many geographers to take an interest to study the retail sector, poor cousin of economic and urban geography (Coquery, 1977; Delobez and Beaujeu-Garnier, 1977). The disaffection, even the indignity, which could be attached to the research carried out on the retail trade, appears even more misplaced now that it’s easy to justify the place of this sector according to various registers (Beaujeu-Garnier, 1982; Dugot et Pouzenc, 2019). From an economic point of view, the retail trade is not a passive intercessor. It doesn’t just facilitate the flow of a myriad of products, thereby making their distribution possible—it also stimulates this flow more and more.

6Once the idea of a rapprochement between retail trade and sustainable development is accepted, a serious contradiction arises. The justification of the usefulness of retail remains anchored in a consumer society, by its very essence, questions the sustainability of development. The reflexive rapprochement of retail and sustainable development can thus be classed as an oxymoron! The purpose of the retail trade being not simply to sell but to stimulate sales, and therefore the production and consumption of goods and resources, it follows that the supply and consumption streams reinforce our environmental footprint. All the more since in recent decades, this consumer society has colonised more and more land: the entire planet supplies goods for shops, and customer catchment areas reach as far as a car can. Moreover, from a social point of view, do we not speak of the “Walmartisation” of jobs to mean the emergence of a class of workers who are badly paid and poorly protected?

  • 3 Établissement Public National d’aménagement et de restructuration des espaces commerciaux et art (...)
  • 4 5 billion euros and 222 towns.

7This active role of retail as a leavening agent of consumerism elevated to the level of lifestyle engenders a fundamental questioning of territorial development and urban planning and a dilemma for geographers. On the one hand, retail plays an undeniable role in the liveliness of territories and therefore their attractiveness. At the municipal level as at the level of national rhetoric, the absence of retail trade is seen as a territorial handicap. Specific plans of action have therefore been developed (Dugot, 2017): in neighbourhoods whose problems were born of urban functionalism, an organisation called EPARECA3 has flagged its ambition to “revive through retail”; faced with the widespread decline in town centres in many small and medium-sized towns, operation “Heart of the City” has been set up under the ægis of the government. Since 2017, the aim has been to “revitalise” central spaces, with retailing being an important element in the plan4. In every case, it involves supporting a retail trade to which is attributed virtues beyond simple economic exchange. It is cited as an essential activity to community life, an incontestable element in regional sustainability. But do we have to support all development plans focused on this sector to the effect that they strengthen a consumer society? A shopping centre is an economic activity which has fed fierce competition between the municipalities which have hosted them. It is also true that the regional extent of certain customer catchment areas has cast shadow over other regions. An archetypical example is offered by the brand centres and factory outlets which have often led to the renewal of spaces in crisis (for example in the French cities of Roubaix and Troyes) (Lamy, 2009). As much from an urban point of view as a social or economic one, this can seem laudable across the territory concerned. It’s very different from the perspective of an operation generating consumption mobility, sometimes on an international scale.

  • 5 National Committee of Retail Geography, bringing together specialized academics in the larger Fr (...)

8The retail trade can therefore be a tool of town and country planning policies. But how can we forget that is also the spearhead of a consumer society at poles apart with sustainable development? This is what contributes to making the commercial sector a forgotten (when one is not in denial or frank opposition) of the broader geographical reflections around sustainability. It was thus that retail geography came belatedly, in the mid-2000s, to get to grips with the topic of sustainable development, having thoroughly studied the modernisation of retail trade and the structural transformations which flowed from it. An important milestone was the symposium entitled “Retail trade and sustainable development” which was held in 2005 in Toulouse under the aegis of the Commission Nationale de Géographie du Commerce5. Aren’t retail activities and sustainable development incompatible? Doesn’t the whole process of retail modernisation underpin this over-exploitation of resources? Undeniably. But that’s exactly what makes a reflexive rapprochement of sustainable development and retail trade particularly fruitful. The sector is the most obvious potential lever of the decarbonation of our societies, whether on the level of products sold, their origin or the way consumers access them. Besides which, consumption is an important social act, and its imprint on modes of production of space is critical. Lemarchand (2010) is emphatic on this point: “the sustainable revitalisation of cities cannot be achieved without retail trade, because it’s a key element in urban sociability; the exchange is not merely economic, it’s also a social and cultural transaction”. Anyone who contemplates the topic of sustainable development cannot therefore avoid including the retail sphere in the equation, even if it means advocating its reduction by shortening supply chains.

  • 6 Le Monde, June 2008.
  • 7 Federation of Trade and Distribution.

9Retail geography has been further driven down its road to Damascus because businesses, starting with the mass retailers, seized the initiative. From 1996, well before single-use plastic bags were banned by law in 2016, the supermarket group Leclerc banned checkout bags. In 2004, the same group pushed for the development of biofuels. In 2008, the Carrefour supermarket group used an advert6 to unveil its new small-format shops as supports for France’s communities and neighbourhoods whose destruction it had widely brought about with the proliferation of its hypermarkets. Today, nearly 14,000 neighbourhood grocery shops have been rolled out by supermarket chains, compared with 10,000 ten years earlier (Fédération du Commerce et de la Distribution, 20197). In the groceries sector, many businesses highlight the fact that their supplies are sourced locally, forgetting that this only includes fresh produce and leaves aside non-food products rarely included when trumpeting this virtuous localism! When plans for new shopping centres emerge, measures to compensate for land degradation are publicised. The flow of the “sustainability” argument, far from drying up, remains a leitmotif of business communication.

10If mass distribution grasped the idea with alacrity, it was because they realised that they were fighting on several fronts of “contestability” (Godard, 2002). The place given over to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in the sales presentations, the emphasis on local food products, the idea of “responsibility,” the “ethical” dimension of products sold, including own brand labels, is the fruit of “anticipatory management” of potential threats. It reflects a fairly paradoxical vision of supermarket chains in France. Whether as individuals or players in the political sphere, we love supermarket chains which create local jobs, we love to shop there; but mass distribution figures in the dock of the accused as the killer of neighbourhood shops, of traditional urban life and complicit in all the evils of globalisation.

11We can link this nonhierarchical profusion of commitments and actions with a standard but basic sales technique: the abundance of merchandise, sometimes to the point of overflowing, is intended to attract customers while also bamboozling them. The top priority for geographers is to deconstruct all that to the best of their ability, while reinjecting a dose of complexity that is singularly absent from actions presented as so many good practices. The latter often have a defect when it comes to sustainable development, a contradictory insularity which is inevitably wide open to all and any approach which makes claims of sustainability. This does not mean that this change in approach to a sector of the economy hasn’t given rise to debate. This means that from the mid-2000s, the study of retail trade, be it rural or urban, be it focused on supply patterns or on demand, can no longer avoid a broadening of the field of thought.

A fruitful entry point for analysing the urban crisis of commercial modernization

12The question of sustainable cities and the place that retail trade occupies or could occupy is the one we will focus on here. According to some geographers, we can consider that there is a reset of an urban ecology as an opportunity for their discipline and, perhaps, an epistemological pivot point (Berdoulay and Soubeyran, 2002). In fact, isn’t the city “recovering a psychological, social, biophysical, material and technical solidity”? Berdoulay and Soubeyran invite us to view the crisis of modernity as encouragement “to consider the geographical environment not as a constraint to be transcended, but as an organising principle in development and, consequently, in urban planning”. This idea finds a very seductive echo in retail geography, leading to a rapprochement between the productive urban economic activity of retail trade and the compulsory imposition of sustainable development.

13The choice of an urban approach does not erase the multiple questions produced by the intersection between sustainability and retail, for example in its functional and social aspects. The city provides the framework for a critical deconstruction of certain practices presented as sustainable. Thus, short circuits and local supply are on a huge upswing. AMAPs or other set-ups which bring producers and consumers of foodstuffs together are developing. Regarding the products consumed, things are moving towards more sustainable consumption with a decrease in market areas and more seasonal produce. But on closer inspection, it is apparent that in terms of logistical and customer flows, this is a net contributor to an increase in journeys made for small quantities of goods (Vaillant, 2016). This leads us to organisational questions which bring us back to the necessity of mutualisation, which, beyond the issue of relations between the different players, falls within an urban or suburban space which needs to be redefined. These new circuits also criss-cross towns and cities, creating by a more distinctive consumption new dividing lines which correspond to types of food consumption and which are superimposed on other lines (Berroir et al., 2015; Delage and Fleury, 2017).

14By its pre-eminence in the construction of the city since the years 1950, the commercial modernization constitutes then an extremely valuable vector of critical analysis of an urban morphology which was widely deployed with the domination of the automobile. This is particularly true in the case of France where modernisation has been singularly violent. Singularly because if modernity falls within the more or less staggered emergence of a consumer society in the 1950s and 1960s in western Europe, it has taken particular routes producing specific territorial registers of modernity. A quick comparison with Germany is edifying. While in this country, the spatial distribution of shops in towns is fairly even from the centre to the periphery, this is not the case in France. Retail modernisation has mostly flourished on the periphery in the form of shopping centres which have sprung up around hypermarkets. This has caused town centres and secondary shopping hubs to suffer, since up to 70% of retail sales have become concentrated in these new edge-of-town shopping hubs. This can be linked to different entrepreneurial histories, but also to France’s less restrictive land management. This singularity is violent because the transformation has been very rapid, leading to disruption accentuated by the relative backwardness of French retail trade at the end of World War II. Let’s take the flagship of retail trade modernisation in France, the hypermarket (defined as having a surface area of more than 2,500 m²). The first hypermarket was opened in 1963 by the Carrefour group.

  • 8 Today, the figures are 2,000 and 10,000 respectively.

15By the 1970s, there were already almost 300 hypermarkets and almost 3,000 supermarkets8. A fact all the more remarkable because French retailing presented quite an outdated image. In 1953, the country had 942,000 retail businesses, or one shop for every 62 inhabitants against 102 in Germany or 89 in the United Kingdom. In 1963, self-service shops, symbol of modernity, numbered only 63 per million against 558 for Germany! High prices, trade practices from another age, a lack of investment in shops—all in all, this paints a picture of an expensive local shopping. If the risk of “retail apocalypse” is sometimes invoked in the face of the rise of e-commerce or as a consequence of a very hypothetical “köpskam,” a first wave had already hit in the 1960s and ’70s. The result is that half of all French municipalities today do not have a single shop, as is the case for many urban neighbourhoods. This modernity was originally pushed for by the population: in 1970, 70% of French citizens were in favour of enlarging supermarkets (Daumas, 2006). Better still, they endorsed (Péron, 2004) the expression of this modernity, with its visual violence of city approaches which have become gaudy tunnels of a society driven by a desire to satisfy the needs of consumerism. This “shoebox” town planning has developed at all levels of the urban framework, even affecting small towns, leaving traditional town centres abandoned. A victory for the automobile.

16This tsunami of retail modernisation is all the more remarkable since it occurs concomitantly with an assigning of heritage status to entire portions of cities. Thus, town centres become oases where it is more and more difficult to get anything done. As in the countryside where the demarcation of the wilderness has given the green light to production-oriented farming, the listing of a few neighbourhoods and historical buildings seems to have largely opened the floodgates to a modernising tide that has engulfed the gateways to the city. This has been accelerated by municipal fragmentation and tax competition.

17This picture is just one of the panels of the urban polyptych constructed by retail trade modernisation. Never mind the opening to unbridled globalised trade, where mass-merchandising outlets offer a choice entry into a society where consumer potential accounts for 55% of GDP. Let’s focus exclusively on territorial aspects. The fabric of mass-merchandising outlets woven by the supermarket chains is the most visible element of the transformations wrought by retail trade, due to its functional imprint on the landscape. But its development has cast shade on all the rest. The reshaping of retail presences is global and evident at every level, from urban neighbourhoods to national or regional urban frameworks. This modernisation which endorses the triumph of car-driven mobility has dried up many retail hubs, breaking the local link between retail trade and daily life. Retail modernisation, mandated though it was by customers, has damaged the relationship between retail trade and the city. Society’s need for consumption remains satisfied in accordance with the standard model of modernity which rests on mass retail and products which are mostly imported, because it meets the consumer needs of the majority in French society. Even so, perceptions of this modernisation have changed. In the context of the multifaceted tidal wave of sustainable development, the destabilisation of an age-old relationship between retail and the urban space has become difficult to live with. Its negative external expressions are more and more visible and windows of opportunity to repair the link between retail and the town in the context of a sustainable city become apparent, in the form of legislative injunctions and the new aspirations of a section of consumers.

Towards sustainable urban planning?

18Urban retail planning is being considered here in its broadest sense, from studies of the regulatory dimension of retail development management to the architectural dimension of the renewal of business investments. In any case, the work falls within a particular tradition. Let’s take the case of regulatory urban planning. The study of the very specific regulatory framework of retail modernity which emerged at the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s is outdated. From the outset, a geographer like Coquery (1977) criticized its basic terms and its intrinsic inability to frame urban retail planning. Furthermore, it is wrongly named, in that it was more of an economic policy than an urban planning measure. Under the influence of legal developments and European injunctions, the question of sustainability nonetheless had more and more input into this regulatory urban planning. And wherever a social or economic diagnosis prevailed, it was the “environmental” dimensions of the law which were examined in the light of their real or presumed consequences for whichever urban space happened to be under discussion (Dugot, 2005; Desse, 2013). Numerous monographic studies have looked at new methods and forms of retail investment. This entry is more or less explicitly anchored in issues of sustainability, but it seems to be a compulsory backdrop. But from words to action, is all this sustainable?

19We must first assume that sustainable city is an illusion. Now more than ever, we need to accept the fact that the city is a “heterotrophic ecosystem” (Da Cunha, 2015). Its retail vocation is, moreover, its traditional expression! Furthermore, we broadly agree with the statement that “the ‘sustainable city’ […] does not exist, either in theory […] or in practice,” which leads us to favour the idea “of cities in transition to this desired ‘sustainable city’” (Levy and Emilianoff, 2011). In fact, exploring the notion of sustainable cities, from a retail trade point of view as from other perspectives, leads us to focus on a process with tools, players, visions that are disparate and for some, debatable. If the sustainable city exists in the absolute, it is a distant and uncertain teleology in its temporality and manifestation. That does not invalidate its interest but delineates its scope, making efforts to improve urban life possible, for example, by meeting global CO2 reduction goals of our urban societies. Strictly within our urban fringes, it is postulated that the manner in which consumer goods are sold in a highly consumerist society is not neutral. The density of the urban fabric with its retail facilities, accessibility and therefore modes of customer transport are not without implications for running a city, posing questions about mobility but also favouring, or at least illustrating, segregation processes.

20This is especially true because the image of French urban trade offers, by its very shortcomings, particularly fertile ground for progress. As the quick comparison with Germany suggested, if the modernisation stage was unavoidable, indeed necessary to a certain societal flourishing, the resulting urban model is in no way inevitable. It becomes apparent that room for manoeuvre exists where there is a transformation in retail property supply in a more restrictive legislative context.

21Let’s start with businesses. The time is past when a shop could proudly sport a sign such as “Au gaspillage” (“In praise of waste”), a sign displayed in many French towns between 1880 and 1930. This doesn’t mean that we waste less today than we did yesterday. It’s simply that what was acceptable in a society at a time when consumption was limited by relatively low living standards is no longer acceptable in a mature consumer society. In addition to the efforts cited above in the core business, the adaptation of the retail offer requires that we question the way it is integrated into the urban space. We seem to have moved from a phase that we could describe as “wild” in the sense that its functional framework doesn’t seem to count any more than its collateral damage, to a phase when the manner of its insertion into territories and landscapes matters more. It’s a vindication of proximity. Efforts are being made to aesthetically improve shopping centres. We can observe efforts at reclassification of some urban approaches or the meticulous architectural work of some developments (Broomberg, 2004). Sustainable development has become an essential reference point for every retail project. The French market is mature, not to say saturated. Whether it’s using one material rather than another, showcasing the use of natural lighting, treating waste water or rainwater, greening passageways and car parks, improving energy efficiency, or even recycling packaging, all these feebly ambitious projects then seek certification (BREEAM). Indeed, these businesses never miss a chance to publicise the certification of their latest baby in the press. Among the many supermarket chain, we could look at, let’s use the example of Lidl, which has seen the strongest growth on the French market. Following a discount strategy and placement of stores which began by targeting working-class markets, the chain subsequently positioned itself as more of a generalist retailer. This has manifested as a large-scale revamping of its retail outlets alongside a campaign to market itself as sustainable. A business specialising in energy efficiency, ENERLIS, has been its partner in this endeavour: solar panels on roofs, connected LED lighting, optimisation of energy consumption via the choice of air conditioning and refrigeration systems, use of renewable energies, re-use of rainwater, etc.

  • 9 Between 2014 and 2016, the Federation of Commerce and Distribution posted a 14% drop in CO2 emis (...)

22We can quickly pinpoint the limitations of these certifications, even if only in the geographic scale of their application. But we can’t deny that they represent progress in reducing the environmental footprint of retail establishments9, and perhaps more importantly, they have helped to establish once and for all the need to improve things. These efforts have been accompanied by a visual enhancement of retail apparatus (Gasnier, 2010b; Lemarchand, 2009; Dugot, 2019). The achievements of a firm like La Cie de Phalsbourg merit a mention for an architectural design which marks a departure from the minimalist architecture of the Fordist period (the Atoll on the edge of Angers, for example). The company displays a “real estate of conviction, [in order] to build the France of tomorrow.” It stakes a claim to certain aesthetic and has no hesitation in leveraging Kant: “Beauty is one of the symbols of goodness”. Perhaps it’s on the commercial peripheries that we’re hearing the first echoes of regret for the famous minister of culture, Jack Lang. He proclaims a “need for beauty,” admitting all-too-common mistake of “making beauty the sole preserve of artists and museums” and, we could add, the old stones of city centres, relegating the peripheral living environment of a majority of French citizens to the rank of planners’ “free fire zones”! While working on retail reconfigurations in urban landscapes, Arnaud Gasnier wondered if ugliness was sustainable (2010a). More and more people seem to think it is not and if aesthetic choices remain up for debate, a tendency to make more effort is notable. We would do well to consider, as Kant did, that beauty is not without relationship to goodness which we define here as the right to live in a soothing city.

23But is it not illusory to think that cathedrals of sustainable consumerism could emerge from all that? Not to mention their capacity to project a light onto the rest of the city? Leaving aside the real purpose of sustainable consumerism, let’s turn to questions about its insularity within the city. Even when repainted in green, these shopping centres remain islands with the same problems: a monofunctional rationale which is accessible almost uniquely by car. These developments do not pose questions about the integration of retail trade into the city in the framework of an overall consideration of urban functioning, notably by failing to consider the mobility of goods and customers. As much from a social as an environmental point of view, the issue for cities is one of accessibility and the question of how to “reweave” the city, with its shopping centres as a starting point (Broomberg, 2004, 2010). But it is not the goal of what remains of the private investments, when it’s just as important for supermarket groups as for developers and property companies to enhance property assets as to develop retail business. Many actions are part of a marketing strategy or even “greenwashing.” Urban planning must to deal with players who are primarily concerned with their profits.

24Whether in terms of the scope or the purpose of the actions, it is the actions of the public authorities that we are called on to examine. Numerous studies have reported on what is usually called “French-style urban retail planning” (Péron, 1998). The expression describes a set of laws which, since the 1970s, have done their utmost to restrict the development of mass retailing. Let’s not forget that this legislative structure has put in place a system for retail planning permission which is distinct from standard urban planning permission. The system has changed several times, in an attempt to adapt to multiple bypassing strategies. The initial goals of maintaining varied forms of retailing out of concern for the protection a large class of small shopkeepers were swept away by the assertiveness of the big retail companies, the success story of French capitalism (Péron, 2004). In a context of fiscal competition between municipalities, this legislative arsenal has not made it possible to restrict the triumph of modernisation with the results described above. Successive reforms, whose diversity we do not have scope to describe in detail here (Desse, 2013; Dugot, 2019), led to improvements in the way retail trade is integrated into urban planning and the planning of urban space. Whether it’s tightening the obligation to provide alternatives to the car for edge-of-town shopping centres, or developing fiscal policies, or urban equipment which favours the reconstruction of retail hubs which weave a finer urban mesh (Operation Heart of the City) or whether it’s about reshaping edge-of-town retail centres in crisis, urban planning documents have incorporated sustainable development as a leitmotif. Ambition is sometimes sadly lacking. Nonetheless, the tools and the objectives born of unavoidable diagnoses of the non-sustainability of urban sprawl dominated by the car and to which retail modernisation has contributed, exist. As part of a certain pragmatism bringing together private partners and local public authorities, the development of edge-of-town zones aims to correct the most obvious architectural and urban planning travesties (Jehl, 2019). We can also recall the programmes put in place by the Ministry for Territorial Cohesion and relationships with local authorities in November 2017 whose goal was to “Reshape edge-of-town retail.” Taking six urban land parcels (two on the edge of the Greater Paris region, two in medium-sized towns, Limoges, Thiers), one in a regional conurbation (Marseille-Aix) and one in a medium-sized offshore town (Saint-Pierre, in La Réunion), the objective is to requalify these monofunctional retail polarities, some of which were in crisis, in order to move them towards more mixed neighbourhoods and displaying improvements in their urban qualities.

  • 10 FEVAD (2020), Les chiffres clés du e-commerce (The key figures of e-commerce).

25It is difficult to pronounce a verdict on a number of ongoing and future changes in the sector: will e-commerce, which today has a turnover of more than €100 billion (of which 56% is in the service sector) or nearly 10% of retail sales, with an annual increase of 13% over the last four years10, continue its inexorable rise? Should we sign up to the quick-fire rhetoric about the end of the “flagship” of French retail modernisation, the hypermarket? Will thousands of specialised shops disappear, taking with them a large part of urban life in many neighbourhoods and small and medium-sized town centres? The Covid 19 crisis has done less to create the problems than it has to reveal a de facto reality. We are at a turning point. But the objective reports of a crisis rub shoulders with opportunities to correct inherited flaws. It starts with systematically putting the retail question into perspective in the broader issue of the urban space and ways of life: housing, work, leisure, mobility.

26A consensus is emerging around the need to produce a different model of urban retail planning with more functional mixing, more proximity, less car-driven mobility, just to stay with the strictly urban. Meanwhile, it shouldn’t be forgotten that proximity also applies to products, referring to aspirations to more responsible and ethical consumption. However, as we have suggested above, these tendencies also possess potential segregational shortcomings which could become inscribed in the urban fabric. These bring effects which run counter to the model of a sustainable city, that is, a more socially balanced organisation. All this demonstrates a necessity: to do urban retail planning, one has to leave behind the sectoral approach that has so far prevailed. But with whom? The modalities, the rhythmicity (incremental corrections or more disruptive processes) and, in the end, the ambition of the transformations to be carried out, all raise questions, including within the geography community.

What kind of urban governance?

27These errors in the construction of a sustainable retail town point to an ultimate question: Who possesses the legitimacy to orient its morphological and social configuration? This question is a crucial one but it is not ideologically neutral, especially in a country like France, which, although formerly capitalist and basically very liberal, notably in terms of urban planning, has developed a mistrust of the private sphere. One has to contend with an ideological inheritance, a cultural heritage which geographers also sign up to. It’s also necessary to contend with a solid centralising and regulatory tradition at a time when other players are on the stage: local and regional authorities and, more recently, citizens who take a more responsive approach to urban development.

28Businesses, public authorities at different levels, citizens, all have a claim to urban planning. All of them have the skills and at least their experience to contribute. Businesses have the legitimacy of their economic activity matched with the knowledge of what is relevant in order for them to run. The public authorities are supposed to act for the common good in their different jurisdictions. As for the citizens, their legitimacy is as inhabitants aspiring to, at the very least, a decent living environment, starting, for example, with the quality of the air they breathe. But they all also have their limitations. Businesses remain economic agents. The financialisation of business assets with the bursting in of international funds (Mérenne-Schoumaker and Nappi-Choulet, 2014) created great tension on the retail property market. A look back over the last few years shows a certain irresponsibility on the part of investors with, between 2000 and 2015, an increase in sales areas representing slightly more than double the rise in consumption. Pascal Madry spoke in 2011 of a “bubble” which holds the promise of future wastelands. As part of a liberal approach to land sales which has contributed to a significant consumption of rural spaces, the public authorities, who are themselves caught up in a competitive logic, have allowed this logic to be imposed on them. And when it was stopped in its tracks, the action of citizens’ groups was notable.

29In recent years, citizens have got involved in large numbers (Subra, 2016). Their mobilisation was sparked by big transport infrastructure projects, water management or tourism projects, but also by retail facilities. Two examples of legal guerrilla war sounded the death knell for some very big retail projects. One is EuropaCity in the Paris region (Lemarchand, 2021) and Val Tolosa on the edge of Toulouse. Apparently, the arguments put forward by their own real estate developers about the sustainability of these projects do not seem to have paid off, with detractors protesting about more land consumption and the maintenance of a consumerist logic, and fighting to protect biodiversity, although the last element is more a route to legal action than a genuine environmental issue. It is interesting to note that EuropaCity’s retail developers gave the social dimension pride of place in the presentation of their project, under the best auspices of environmental certification. This retail project is located in a “département” which has accumulated the largest poor and immigrant population in the country. As the developers did not fail to remind us when they paid for a full-page advert in the daily newspaper Le Monde (29 October 2019). They drew attention to an investment of 3 billion euros and the creation of 10,000 jobs in “an area that has fallen into dereliction.” And they quoted the results of a survey carried out in some 20 of the municipalities affected by the project, which showed that 81% of local people were in favour of the project. The project was then presented as “a strong response to promise of a republican equality, guiding all the territories in their economic and sustainable development, and supporting shared environmental ambitions.” Without giving an opinion here on the merits of the case, there are questions to answer about the legitimacy of one side to open a combat which is manifestly not shared by the others. How much scope should a more proactive democracy have in constructing or urban retail planning? Never mind the inconsistency of a citizen consumer who often finds it hard to bring his opinion as a citizen into line with his reality as a consumer. Let’s look instead at the current legitimacy of citizen action. As this case shows, civic discourse can also be hijacked by some, or by a certain type of argument. Without even mentioning “nimby”-type motivations, citizens’ groups are not neutral in the targets they choose and their means of action (Nez, 2015). In other words, the interests of collectives are not those of the whole community.

30This brings us back to the importance of the logic of arbitration in urban retail planning. But how to arbitrate? Pascal Madry (2018) talks about the State itself having two schools of thought around urban retail planning. The first places retail’s freedom of establishment above all else, counting on the fact that laisser-faire economics will lead to the sector becoming more competitive, which will automatically result in the city adapting. The second, described as the “planning school,” in contrast with the “liberal” school, focuses less on the business itself than on the integration of the retail business in the territory concerned. Where the first neglects negative externalities of retail property investments left free to choose where they locate, the second forgets the constraints of an economic activity which jeopardise its durability and ultimately its role of revitalising territories. As is often the case, the truth of about constructing a sustainable relationship between the retail trade and the city is located somewhere in the middle of these twin preoccupations. The duty of the geographer must be to deconstruct these “solutions” and the tools overhyped by businesses which don’t properly respond to the systemic complexity of all and any quests for a sustainable urban space. It should gauge civic mobilisations or the actions of public authorities with the same circumspection. With regard to the importance of retail commerce in the construction of urban space and the functioning of urban society, the involvement of businesses should come in for particular scrutiny. If the construction of a sustainable urban retail trade depends on innovation, it is as much in the capacity to get players with different or even contradictory aspirations to collaborate, than in new forms of retail outlet or changes in the range of products. It is towards a new form of urban contract that town planning must go. Ultimately reconnecting with a national tradition from which we have gone astray, that of an urban planning not limited to regulating the negative effects of the market but a framework for an authentic urban planning policy.

Conclusion

31Can we have a sustainable urbanism beyond an ideological posture? The real and recorded facts, even if they seem to be part of the proclaimed process of greening of the urban economy, need to be put into perspective within the financialization of commercial real estate. Shopping centers, following on from the residential and office real estate, have become the necessary support for the rotation of surplus capital (Harvey, 2011). Field of intervention of urban entrepreneurialism, retail activities are a central support for the urban dimension of neoliberalism (Pinson, 2020). It is in this context that we must judge the latest productions of commercial town planning presented as respectful for the environment.

32It is not an appeal for a “real geography of combat” (Duterme, 2020). It is, nonetheless, about progressing in our understanding of a complex interaction of players with intertwined legitimacies and aspirations which, if not contradictory, are at least different or prisoners of varying timescales. Acquiring distance doesn’t mean setting aside or adopting a systematically suspicious approach to the actions of retail businesses. The scientific approach which is intrinsic to retail geography must lead to the negotiation of what is relevant to the debate we need to have, and therefore to the arbitration to be advocated, on the one hand, and what comes under the heading of posturing on the other. The work of critical geography must find a place in the analysis of the urban retail trade because it is undeniably easy to observe in it the translation of a spatialization of capitalism through the modes of production and consumption. These modes are not neutral either symbolically or in terms of social relationships which they reshape and perpetuate (Harvey, 2008, 2011). But in order not to get lost in purely scholastic discussions, it is all the more necessary for retail geography to consider commercial town planning according to a holistic logic. The objective of thinking about the sustainable city imposes the systematic integration in any work on the changes of the retail trade and consumer practices, the joint problems such as urban logistics, mobility, housing or more generally the spatial distribution of retail establishments into urban fabric.

33The rapprochement between retail trade transformation, sustainable development and urban planning, is part of a broader questioning of our ways of life. The difficulty is in navigating against powerful currents where the marketing image based on projects, which point up certain themes (short circuits) or their spatial expression (virtuous shopping centres), has taken the place of policy. It is insufficient, even counterproductive, to suggest that there be a process where there are, in fact, only a few isolated projects, sometimes socially selective and, in the final analysis, merely skimming the surface of the problem. A whole discourse of deconstruction comes into play, something which has been more or less done by a retail geography (Dugot, 2019; Dugot and Pouzenc, 2010; Gasnier and Lemarchand, 2014). For all that, it is also necessary to avoid entering a permanent state of suspicion towards any project or act of governance which connects with the private sphere. The retail trade is a private-sector activity. To fail to recognise this is less about progress towards a sustainable city than about sinking into futile scholasticism.

34In all these respects, the construction site of the sustainable city and of the role that retail activities play there is still wide open. This is even more true since we should not minimise the numerous unknowns in the equation of a virtuous urban retail planning. Which urban morphology is appropriate? Proximity is often cited: reassembling an urban multifunctionality consisting of short distances, promoting sustainable modes of transport, etc. But what about the logistical angle? How do we contend with a heterogeneous urban heritage made up of a fabric of varying density and where there is no single answer? What about the rise of e-commerce: how do we integrate that myriads of deliveries into the equation? What is the most virtuous way of organising logistics? Geographers need to experiment, understand, diagnose the localisation of the retail establishments in relation to customers with regard to all the externalities, but also integrating the whole of the logistical chain. More than ever, thinking about a retail entry to a sustainable city means not being locked in there! Nor can retail geography avoid interdisciplinary input and debates of a more ideological tone.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

BEAUJEU-GARNIER J. & DELOBEZ A. (1977), Géographie du commerce, Paris, Masson, 282 p.

BEAUJEU-GARNIER J. (1982), « Les géographes et les activités commerciales », Annales de Géographie, 506, pp. 401-403.

BERDOULAY V. & SOUBEYRAN O. (2002), L’écologie urbaine et l’urbanisme, Paris, La Découverte, 274 p.

BERROIR S., CLERVAL A., DELAGE M., FLEURY A., FOL S., GIROUD M., RAAD L. & WEBER S. (2015), « Commerce de détail et changement social urbain : immigration, gentrification, déclin », Echogéo, 33, https://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/14353

BOIVIN N. (2010), « Du panier à la plateforme coopérative, vendre à la ville du “commerce durable” », in Gasnier A., Commerce et ville ou commerce sans la ville ?, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 35-46.

BOIVIN N. & LEMARCHAND N. (2014), « Commerce et alterconsommation. Consommer autrement », in Gasnier A. & Lemarchand N. (dir.), Le commerce dans tous ses états, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 217-224.

BROOMBERG J. (2004), « Une réussite de l’articulation urbanisme-transport : la Toison d’Or à Dijon », Transports Urbains, 108, pp. 25-31.

BROOMBERG J. (2011), « L’accessibilité des centres commerciaux de périphérie par les transports publics : un enjeu de la ville durable », Bulletin de la Société géographique de Liège, 56, pp. 51-68.

COQUERY M. (1977), Mutations et structures du commerce de détail en France. Étude géographique, Paris, Le Signe, 185 p.

DA CUNHA A. (2015), « Nouvelle écologie urbaine et urbanisme durable. De l’impératif écologique à la qualité urbaine », Bulletin de la Société Géographique de Liège, 65, pp. 5-25.

DAUMAS J.C. (2006), « Consommation de masse et grande distribution. Une révolution permanente (1957-2005) », Vingtième Siècle, 91, pp. 57-76.

DELAGE M. & FLEURY A. (dirs.) (2017), Faire ses courses à Paris. 2013-2016, Programme de recherche Paris 2030, Ville de Paris.

DESSE R .P. (2013), « La fin de l’urbanisme commercial à la française », Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, 108, pp. 5-15.

DUGOT P. & POUZENC M. (2005), Commerce et développement durable, Actes du colloque de Toulouse-Le-Mirail, Géodoc, 54, Toulouse, Université de Toulouse – Le Mirail.

DUGOT P. & POUZENC M. (dir.) (2010), Territoires du commerce et développement durable, Paris, L’Harmattan, 244 p.

DUGOT P. (2017), « Commerce et marge », BAGF, 3, pp. 419-435.

DUGOT P. (2019), Commerce et urbanisme commercial dans la fabrique de la ville durable, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Midi.

DUTERME R. (2020), Petit manuel pour géographie de combat, Paris, La Découverte, 208 p.

GASNIER A. (2010a), « Recompositions commerciales et paysages urbains. La laideur et l’artefact sont-ils durables ? », in Dugot P. & Pouzenc M., Territoires du commerce et développement durable, Paris, L’Harmattan, pp. 81-129.

GASNIER A. (2010b), Commerce et ville ou commerce sans la ville ?, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 298 p.

GASNIER A. & LEMARCHAND N. (2014), Le commerce dans tous ses états, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 360 p.

GODARD O. (2002), « Le développement durable et les entreprises », Revue des Deux Mondes, octobre-novembre, pp.101-128.

HARVEY D. (2008), Géographie de la domination, Paris, Les prairies ordinaires, 118 p.

HARVEY D. (2011), Le capitalisme contre le droit à la ville, Paris, Ed. Amsterdam, 93 p.

JEHL L. (2019), « Restructurer les zones commerciales périphériques face aux mutations du commerce : objectifs, méthodes et nouveaux jeux d’acteurs », RIURBA, 7, 19 p.

LAMY C. (2009), « Les magasins d’usine et villages de marques. Temples du shopping touristique », Espaces, Tourisme et loisirs, 269, pp. 30-38.

LANG J. (2014), Ouvrons les yeux. La nouvelle bataille du patrimoine, Paris, HC Editions, 35 p.

LATOUCHE S. (2003), « À bas le développement durable ! Vive la décroissance conviviale !”, in Bernard M., Cheynet V. & Clementin B. (dir.), Objectif décroissance, Paris, Ed. Parangon, pp. 19-26.

LEMARCHAND N. (2009), Géographie du commerce et de la consommation : les territoires du commerce distractif, mémoire HDR.

LEMARCHAND N. (2010), « Commerce et renouvellement durable des villes : analyse de stratégies et d’opérations récentes », in Gasnier A. (dir.), Commerce et ville ou commerce sans la ville, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 281-283.

LEMARCHAND N. (2021), “Mega-mall, global city and social issues of our times the case of Europacity in Paris”, Cities, 114, 6 p.

LEVY J. & LUSSAULT M. (2003), Dictionnaire de la géographie et de l’espace des sociétés, Paris, Belin, 1033 p.

LEVY A. & EMELIANOFF C. (2011), « éditorial. Quelle ville durable ? », Espaces et sociétés, 147, 4, pp. 7-23.

MADRY P. (2011), « Le commerce est entré dans sa bulle », communication colloque Commerce et discontinuités, Arras, 23-25 mars.

MADRY P. (2018), « Le nouveau rapport entre ville et commerce et l’impossible réforme des politiques d’urbanisme commercial », Tous urbains, 21, pp. 42-47.

MERENNE-SCHOUMAKER B. & NAPPI-CHOULET I. (2014), « Commerce et opérateurs immobiliers. Un marché en voie de financiarisation », in Gasnier A. & Lemarchand N., Le commerce dans tous ses états, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 197-204.

MOATI P. (2011), La nouvelle révolution commerciale, Paris, Odile Jacob, 315 p.

NEZ H. (2015), Urbanisme : la parole citoyenne, Paris, Ed. Le Bord de l’eau, 284 p.

PERON R. (1998), « L’urbanisme commercial à la française », Les annales de la recherche urbaine, 78, pp. 5-12.

PERON R. (2004), Les boîtes. Les grandes surfaces dans la ville, Nantes, L’Atalante, 222 p.

PILLEBOUE J. & POUZENC M. (2007), « La production agro-alimentaire française face à la grande distribution : l’équitable et le durable dans le discours et les stratégies des fournisseurs », BAGF, 4, pp. 386-398.

PINSON G. (2020), La ville néolibérale, Paris, PUF, 160 p.

SUBRA P. (2016), Zones à défendre. De Sivens à Notre-Dame-des-Landes, Paris, Ed. de L’Aube, 95 p.

VAILLANT L. (2016), « L’enjeu logistique des circuits courts alimentaires », Revue Transports, 7, pp. 14-22.

Haut de page

Notes

1 “Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Our Common Future. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, United Nations, Oct. 1987).

2 Association pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture Paysanne (Association for the Maintenance of “Peasant” Agriculture).

3 Établissement Public National d’aménagement et de restructuration des espaces commerciaux et artisanaux (National Public Office for the Development and Restructuring of Commercial and Craft Spaces).

4 5 billion euros and 222 towns.

5 National Committee of Retail Geography, bringing together specialized academics in the larger French National Geography Committee.

6 Le Monde, June 2008.

7 Federation of Trade and Distribution.

8 Today, the figures are 2,000 and 10,000 respectively.

9 Between 2014 and 2016, the Federation of Commerce and Distribution posted a 14% drop in CO2 emissions per pallet of goods and a 7% drop in water consumption.

10 FEVAD (2020), Les chiffres clés du e-commerce (The key figures of e-commerce).

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Philippe Dugot, « Retail geography and the building of a sustainable city »Belgeo [En ligne], 3 | 2024, mis en ligne le 10 décembre 2024, consulté le 19 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/73656 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12vze

Haut de page

Auteur

Philippe Dugot

Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès, LISST-Cieu (Laboratoire interdisciplinaire Solidarités, Sociétés, Territoires - Centre interdisciplinaire d'études urbaines)
ORCID 0000-0003-1410-4460
philippe.dugot@univ-tlse2.fr

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search