Exploring the roles of spatial configuration and property market data in achieving sustainable retail environment in Leeds city centre

The understanding that property value, street connectivity, accessibility, and peoples’ wellbeing are related could help in achieving sustainable environment. Urban and property decision makers including developers, investors, planners, and occupiers are now challenged with need to balance economy, society, and environmental needs to achieve sustainability. In a practical sense, a given city centre space containing retail property (dominantly) should have physical retail shops positioned in optimum (prime) locations that will attract the high footfall of consumers, reduces carbon footprint of consumers/suppliers, and generate optimum return for landlords and the property occupiers. This research maps out optimum locations of real shops (retail property) to achieve sustainable retail location within Leeds city centre. This study explores how sustainable retail locations could be achieved viz-a-viz interconnectivity of street network and its relationships with retail property market data. The study explores the spatial relationships between retail property value, consumer movement and shopping destinations. The work rests on the assumptions of space syntax that the interconnectivity of street network influence influx of people movement, property value and people wellbeing. The study analyses the spatial layouts of Leeds city centre (UK) using DepthMap and QGIS to better understand how sustainable retail locations can be achieved base on existing theory of spatial configuration. The work shows that reconfiguration and repositioning of certain numbers retail property could enhance property value, consumer movement and wellbeing, thereby increasing the chance of achieving a sustainable retail environment. The study recommends similar investigations into other urban centres to better understand how sustainability could be achieved in an urban setting