Linked trips and town centre impacts revisited - broadening the methodological debate

摘要

The recognition achieved by our large-scale Tesco-funded three-year study (2007-10) of the impact of large foodstores on market towns and district centres (MTDC hereafter) continues to delight and gratify us. Reflecting on the reasons why its findings rapidly became 'state of the art' in planning practice - albeit with the downside that those findings are sometimes quoted out of context, mechanistically, and without due sensitivity - we invariably pick out two key attributes of the study: First, the logic and simplicity of its design - two clusters of four case study centres (one northwestern and urban, one south-western and rural), with, in each cluster, three centres which experienced a large in-centre or edge-of-centre foodstore opening during the study period, plus one no-development 'control' centre. Second, the transparency and rigour of its 'before/after' methodology and execution - with significant amounts of detail on topics which are not usually made available in planning reports (for example on survey segment response rates) being released to allow readers to reach their own judgements on the quality of the research and the findings drawn from it.