Resilience from COVID-19 Infections in a Shopping Streets

Focusing on Case Comparisons of Osaka Shinsaibashi-suji Shopping Street and Kuromon Market

Abstract

To investigate the resilience of central shopping districts in a global pandemic, this study explored the possibility of resilience from the Corona disaster by comparing Shinsaibashisuji shopping district, the largest in western Japan, and Kuromon Market, which has shifted to a tourist destination type. The characteristics observed in both shopping streets, which have different main customers, were that the number of visitors to Shinsaibashi was less than half from 2019 to 2021, while the number of visitors to Kuromon Market was about one-thirtieth. In Kuromon Market, where foreign tourists were the main clientele, land prices fluctuated around the Corona Disaster at a higher rate than in Shinsaibashisuji. In terms of government and local government support, the “employment adjustment subsidy” was more effective than the “reduced business hours subsidy” in both shopping areas. As keys to resilience, the Shinsaibashisuji shopping district emphasized sales centering on department stores and information exchange among individual stores, while Kuromon Market reexamined its clientele, which had been mainly foreign tourists, and found it important to offer new services, including sales targeting Japanese tourists and food delivery for neighborhood residents. The market is now in the process of rethinking its foreign tourist clientele.