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  • Íñigo Lope de Toledo
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Madrid, 11th October 2017

We live a time of flourishing trade in the center of the city. Of an undisputed and permanent improvement that is experiencing the attractiveness of the traditional shopping street, the “high street”, for, at the same time, retail operators on the one hand and for consumers on the other. In Spain and everywhere It is truly a phenomenon of recovery of the city center, worldwide.

Driven by the determination with which the large operators of retail are looking for stores in the commercial streets of the center and with the recovery of the spirit of open and attractive streets that have achieved many pedestrianizations and extension of sidewalks, returns to stand on the table a reality that, for many years now has been talking about: the possibility of making these commercial axes, at least the most successful, true shopping centers.

Although there has always been a collision with the harsh reality of a huge multiplicity of owners, the consequent lack of control over activities, and the difficulty of a truly effective common management, this possibility or, better, this opportunity, is more alive than never. Not perhaps, true, for all shopping streets, but at least for the most central, attractive and well connected.

For many years now, sometimes driven by the Administration and with a part of public funds, physical models of approximation, with attractive common spaces, have been applied to the moles of shopping centers: pedestrianization, furniture, signalling, areas of games, etc., have gone in this direction. And there have also been tests of a common management, with joint programs of animations and cooperative marketing operations. Live groups of merchants of these commercial axes have also achieved in some cases, a relative homogeneity in schedules, customer services, etc. All this has been setting up a determined approach to the mall model.

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