The changing role of the CBD within the metropolitan retail structure of Hobart

The role of the central business district of cities throughout the western world is changing in response to a wide range of influences. Demographic changes, particularly urban population growth and distribution, growth in real income, and growth in consumer mobility are among the most important of these influences. In the past two decades not only has city growth led to an ever increasing proportion of consumers living further from the central business district and therefore visiting it less frequently, but public transport, at one time a major centralizing force, has been neglected by consumers in favour of the private car. Inner city parking facilities have fallen far short of demand, and freeway development, which initially encouraged centralized traffic flow, has aggravated inner city congestion, so that the CBD has become less accessible to the motorized consumer who has sought to satisfy his demands in suburban locations. Technological advances in the fields of communications, consumer credit, refrigeration, mass production, and improving retail technology have tended to favour suburban retailing, and under the impact of the supermarket, the planned shopping centre, and the freestanding discount department store the CBD's importance has declined, and it has concentrated increasingly upon the sale of high order goods for which it is best suited. This study examines the changing role of the CBD within the metropolitan retail structure of Hobart and seeks to explain the spatial distribution and interrelationships of retailing in terms of central place theory, using statistical techniques of analysis where appropriate. It demonstrates the fact that the fundamental commercial structure of Hobart conforms remarkably with the spatial organization of the cities of the western world where similar forces are at work. It shows that the process of retail decentralization may be regarded as a natural consequence of city growth and that Hobart CBD, which continues to play an over-dominant role in the metropolitan retail system, can be expected to decline in importance before a steady state is reached