Spatial Logic of Shopping Malls: Application of Space Syntax in understanding Economics of Architecture

Abstract

Research findings of architecture and environmental psychology espouse the supremacy of built environment in influencing human behavior in general and movement behavior within buildings and urban areas in particular. Retail management studies on the other hand highlight the importance of influencing human movement as a determining factor for tenant-mix design. Identifying a proper mix of tenant stores in a shopping mall is responsible for its economic performance and is considered a strategic mall management decision. In practice, this decision is taken by management professionals, based mostly on gut feeling or rule of thumb. So, there is a scope for integration of knowledge of these two different disciplines for significantly enhancing tenanting decision making in shopping malls, which will ultimately lead to its economic success. A proper methodology is required in this juncture to relate spatial configuration with movement. Verbal description of space, prevalent in the architectural practice, makes it difficult for correlating with measurable variables like footfall. Space syntax analysis is a potential evidence based approach for quantitative description of configuration in explaining movement through space. The purpose of this paper is twofold: identifying the supremacy of space syntax measures over normal metric measures and establishing a spatial rationale behind tenanting decision making (optimal area and rent of tenant stores) through developing the standard bid-rent model with tenant store specific variables and solving under the conditions of maximizing profit and situation of perfect competition. Consequently, retail space planning will not only be an accommodator of functional requirements but will be a potential tool for economic success through generating, controlling and predicting movement.

Space Syntax Guide to Optimize Shopping Mall

“…Sumanta Deb progressively developed a formal model of bid-rent based on store location within shopping mall using space syntax as a guide to place a retail (Deb, 2013(Deb, , 2014(Deb, , 2015Deb & Mitra, 2020). This model helps shopping mall managers to set the objective value of rent to maximize the profit of every retail.…”

“…Customer density is the scale of customer numbers based on accessibility where the most accessible shops in a particular arrangement will generate more customers (Deb, 2013). The accessibility is relying on spatial configurational variables (metric distance and cognitive distance) (Deb & Mitra, 2020). Metric distance is a simple measurement of the distance from the center of the mall (Deb, 2014).…”

“…To sum it up, all the shopping mall design considerations describe the complexity of the design thinking process and need a comprehensive solution to manage the space to be more optimal. But recently, all these considerations are still unsolved due to the rule of thumbs (Deb & Mitra, 2020) and the subjective judgment of the architect or building manager (Fujitani & Kishimoto, 2012).…”

“…Some articles were trying to find other new variables that possibly affect or affected by the spatial configuration (Al-Juboori & Mustafa, 2014;Aydogan & Salgamcioglu, 2017;Haofeng et al, 2017;Kong & Kim, 2012). Several articles are theoretical, using space syntax to make framework, rules, and models (Deb, 2013(Deb, , 2014(Deb, , 2015Deb & Mitra, 2020) to replace the conventional rules of thumb. And a few articles combine the space syntax method with other methods like multiple regression analysis (Fujitani & Kishimoto, 2012), GIS (Yuo et al, 2013), Q-analysis (Omer & Goldblatt, 2016), and ERAM (Ha et al, 2020).…”

“…In the shopping mall, Intelligibility shows the ability of user's wayfinding, the higher the intelligibility, the lower the user's chance to get lost in the shopping mall. Bai & Yao, 2018;Deb, 2013Deb, , 2014Deb, , 2015Deb & Mitra, 2020;Min et al, 2012;Yuo et al, 2013 9 3 Integration Al-Juboori & Mustafa, 2014;Aydogan & Salgamcioglu, 2017;Bai & Yao, 2018;Deb, 2013Deb, , 2014Deb & Mitra, 2020;Fujitani & Kishimoto, 2012;Ha et al, 2020;Haofeng et al, 2017;Kong & Kim, 2012, 2013Min et al, 2012;Omer & Goldblatt, 2016;Vialard et al, 2017;Wong & Tam, 2019;Yuo et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2012 Space syntax measurement is simulation-based on the general logic of people's behavior. In reality, many factors can affect people's behavior such as culture.…”