Research On Urban Shopping And Leisure Spaces

The transition from Fordism to Post Fordism has made the western world enter into the post-industrial era. With diversity of products and increase of income, people consume not only materials but also services, and the object of consumption shifts away from a total focus on use values to issues of sign values. Comsumption has gradually become the way of self-actualization that finally envolve the worldwide dissemination of consumerism. In both developed countries and underdeveloped countries, consumption spaces have become an integral part of the postindustrial city. They form the main component of the city's infrastructure of consumption: a built environment that replaced the earlier infrastructure of production and a physical form that visually and spatially dominated the cities of the industrial-modern era. Taking Shanghai, one of the most developed cities in China, as an example, this dissertation analyzes the characteristics and spactial distribution of urban consumption spaces: shopping and leisure.There are five chapters in this dissertation. The first chapter is the introduction of the research, putting forward why the dissertation chose the topic and describing research contents, approach, frame and concept of consumption spaces. Chapter 2 gives a review of the theories of consumption and the progress of research on consumption spaces at home and abroad. The two following chapters are the main parts of the paper. Chapter 3 discusses the characteristics of consumption spaces and the factors affect the development of consumption spaces. Chapter 4 respectively studies the spatial distribution of urban shopping and leisure spaces. Following the explanation of current locations of main retail outlets, the paper takes hypermarkets in Shanghai as examples to analyze the distribution of shopping spaces and its dynamic mechanism through illustrating the change of hypermarkets' location over the years. As for leisure spaces, the paper first indicates current locations of main leisure consumption sites, then base on the comparison of two hottest leisure spaces in Shanghai-Hengshan Road and Xintiandi, the paper analyzes the distribution of leisure consumption spaces and its influence factors. Chapter 5 is the conclusion which outlines the main conclusions and the research forecasts.