Abstract
The retail structure has changed with big stores opening and varying consumer behavior for last ten years, and it is the most important to study the changing retail area and the structure of shopping street, especially the vertical structure of sphopping street in the city centers where multifloored buildings are growing.
The purpose of this paper is; 1) to analyse the change of retail area with the opening of big stores, and 2) to analyse the vertical structure of nine shopping streets in Yamagata Basin.
The author analysed the change of retail area comparing the rate of shopping dependency, the rate of retail sales and the index of retail activity (I. R.), where
I.R.=(Ri/∑Ri-Pi/∑Pi)×1000
Ri: retail sales of the city i Pi: population of the city i.
The results are summarized as follows.
(1) Two remarkable tendencies are clarified in the change of Yamagata retail area; extending as to high-level goods and diminishing as to lower-level goods. The latter is due to the opening of big stores in other cities. The shopping streets in Yamagata city have inclined to high-level goods and have been distinguished from the shopping streets in other cities in function and chracter.
(2) Except big stores, the specialized stores in Yamagata central shopping streets, those are of the highest level among the above nine, are using up to the third floor of the building, and the second and third floores are apt to be used for amusement-service function.
