The 39 steps – to understanding High Street performance – Part 1

Infographic-website_900x900This month our new Innovate project started. The project will bring big data to town and city centre decision makers, enabling them to optimise footfall whilst also improving the experience of centre users. The first stage of the project (running from now until Spring 2017) is very research focused.  Because we have over 9 years of hourly footfall data, courtesy of the project lead Springboard, the research team at the Institute of Place Management (Manchester Metropolitan University) and the University of Cardiff can really start to work out how and why town and city centres perform as they do.  Our findings will then be incorporated into a place management information system and a serious of dashboard products, built by our technology partners MyKnowledgeMap.

These new products will support decision making in towns and cities, by making important data more readily available and more easily accessible to the wide range of stakeholders who need to collaborate to build strong centres. Continue reading “The 39 steps – to understanding High Street performance – Part 1”

Footfall signatures research wins best paper prize

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Nikos Ntounis shows off our best paper prize at this year’s AM conference

by Prof Cathy Parker

Our new £1m Innovate high street and retail project may have just started, but the research underpinning our successful bid for the£1m ‘bringing big data to small users’ project has been awarded a ‘best in track’ prize for retail at this year’s Academy of Marketing Conference, held at Newcastle Business School.

The research identified new footfall signatures and town types the team had found in their preliminary analysis of footfall data, provided by Springboard, who are leading the new project.  The findings were presented in a competitive paper “Radical Marketing and the UK High Street: Towards a New Typology of Towns” authored by Cathy Parker, Nikos Ntounis, Simon Quin and Ed Dargan. Continue reading “Footfall signatures research wins best paper prize”

Working together for stronger towns

Oxford_High_Street_shoppersby Prof Cathy Parker

On the 4th July 2016 I was invited to take part in the inaugural Oxfordshire High Streets Conference.  I  am saying inaugural as the delegates found the day very useful so we hope there will be another one! As a place management scholar, there is nothing better than sharing place insight and debating its relevance, in a local context. As a researcher, I get to know a lot about problems and I get to know my data intimately.   But, my work tends to be read by academics and other people who also focus on the data/problem side of things.  This means I don’t always connect with the people who want to put our research findings into practice.  To get the opportunity to present our research on footfall signatures at the event was especially rewarding.  Having the chance to hear directly from representatives of towns that feel their centre’s profile is changing from one of comparison shopping to one that is more focused on community retail and services, for example, was really useful.  I got a chance to take part in the important debate about what this change means ‘on the ground’, in terms of managing the offer, attracting the right type of businesses, changing opening hours and communicating all these changes in the community. Continue reading “Working together for stronger towns”

IPM Executive Education: Entry now available for Place Management and Leadership 2016

Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University
Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University

Overview

The Place Management and Leadership programme at Manchester Metropolitan University is a part-time taught course that is predominantly for existing practitioners in the place management sector. Place management encompasses a range of professions internationally, including town and city centre management, market management, Downtown and Mainstreet management, destination management and marketing, Business Improvement District management and city marketing and branding. It may also involve civic and and community organisations, or even individuals who share a passion for local places, and who wish to make their communities more sustainable and liveable.


The aim of the qualification is to develop confident, highly reflective and respected place managers, capable of strategic thinking and transformative but inclusive place management.


Place management is an open and dynamic process, embracing new approaches to place change such as the Transition Town movement.  For this reason, the course is also suitable for local politicians and local community members leading or contributing to place initiatives. Continue reading “IPM Executive Education: Entry now available for Place Management and Leadership 2016”

Save the Date: IPM Study Trip to Athens, 12th – 14th January 2017

Aghia Irini square, Athens
Aghia Irini square, Athens

Join us for another IPM study trip – this time to Athens, Greece.

This 3-day accredited educational trip to Athens is a combination of site visits, lectures & workshops as well as meetings with local place managers (local partnerships, markets, town centre revewal, local initiatives, local tourism etc.). Athens is a particularly interesting case study as Place Management here takes place in an extended economic crisis with the voluntary sector often taking over the role of both state and private sector.

Check the IPM site for regular updates

Continue reading “Save the Date: IPM Study Trip to Athens, 12th – 14th January 2017”

JPMD Special Issue online now: Crime prevention through urban design, planning and management

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Editorial by Ares Kalandides

Dedicated to the memory of Prof Clara Cardia

Crime prevention is increasingly to be found at the top of the place management agenda and it is now generally accepted that good places are also safe places. Of course, crime prevention is about more things than just places: it is about people and agency, about poverty and inequality, about weakness and strength, about moral values and social norms among many things. Yet, it is also recognized that place is a fundamental category when we want to look at the conditions or the local situation that facilitates the act of crime. For place managers, crime or indeed the fear of crime, have been constant issues in dealing with the quality of places and in particular, but not only, public places. How do we make public space safer and also, how do we make people feel safer in public space? Crime Prevention through Urban Design Planning and Management (CP-UDPM) puts place in the centre of the approach and looks at the conditions that make crime possible locally and induce a fear of crime: a badly-lit alley, an abandoned subway, indifferent neighbours etc. The concept of crime has been extended to include incivilities such as litter and vandalism – seen both as a problem in themselves, but also as a sign of abandoned and unsafe public space. We do not want to enter the discussion of definitions here, but suffice to say that both crime and incivilities are contested terms, seen both as socially constructed and contingent.

You can access the special issue of the Journal of Place Management and Development here. Become a member of the Institute of Place Management to gain free access to JPMD. Continue reading “JPMD Special Issue online now: Crime prevention through urban design, planning and management”

The latest in thinking and re-thinking about places

Photography: Ian Southerin
Photography: Ian Southerin

by Dr Heather Skinner*

Read about the cutting edge research presented on Day 2 into the conceptual and strategic aspects of thinking and re-thinking about places – the overarching theme of the 3rd Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places. Continue reading “The latest in thinking and re-thinking about places”

Multifunctional Centres: a sustainable role for town and city centres

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By Rept0n1x – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7475787

by Dr Steve Millington, Nikos Ntounis, Prof Cathy Parker and Simon Quin

Executive summary [You can download the full report from the IPM site]

Whilst omni-channel retailing and the digital high street may be two of the latest talking points in the retail property industry, our towns and city centres have always been shape by a series of technological, social and political revolutions. The purpose of this report is to examine how, after many years of mono-functionality focused upon retailing, our centres are experiencing something of a renaissance, and remerging as multi-functional ones, supporting leisure and recreation, employment, tourism, heritage, culture, housing, employment, education, health and wellbeing, as well as retail. Continue reading “Multifunctional Centres: a sustainable role for town and city centres”

Images from the 3rd Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places

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A very interesting and impactful event

The 3rd Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places heard presentations from 36 authors, with delegates representing 28 institutions from 15 countries across Europe, the USA, the Middle East and the Far East.

You can read the reflections on the event and brief abstracts from each academic and practitioner presentation here, and thanks to our wonderful photographer Ian Southerin, you can take a look at more images in a short video that captured the atmosphere of our fantastic event.  Continue reading “Images from the 3rd Corfu Symposium on Managing & Marketing Places”

What different town types are emerging in the multi-channel era?

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By Ian Muttoo – originally posted to Flickr as Alone / TogetherUploaded using F2ComButton, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8808073

by Prof Cathy Parker*

Our ‘Bringing Big Data to Small Users‘ project is funded by Innovate UK, the UK Goverment’s innovation agency,to improve the customer experience of town centres and traditional retail areas, such as high streets and markets. The project will do this by bringing new research and insight directly to key stakeholders in locations – such as retailers and other businesses, property owners, local councils and place managers. The project is led by retail data specialists Springboard, who are the sector leaders in collecting footfall data in retail and other locations.

Continue reading “What different town types are emerging in the multi-channel era?”