The Impacts of Area-Based Policies on Essential Retail in Vulnerable Areas

Since the 1990s, urban regeneration has emerged as the main initiative of the European Territorial Development Strategy. A series of integrated urban regeneration policies have subsequently been implemented to redress the socio-territorial imbalance in urban areas by improving the structure of opportunities available to inhabitants. The aim of the current paper is to evaluate the effect of such policies of proximity on the “essential retail trade” in neighborhoods in Andalusia. A quasi-experimental methodology was applied using the Difference in Differences (DiD) technique in order to ascertain the changes attributed to the intervention of the projects. In addition, change trends were analyzed using repeat measurements models for each calculated indicator and in the different considered contexts. The findings show an increase in the density and diversity of essential retail businesses in experimental and control areas. We found that in general, intervention had no significant effect on essential retail trade. However, the results do indicate that the impact of these plans is conditioned by the possible effect of different contexts and their specific dynamics (historical districts of large cities or towns on the one hand or peripheral suburbs on the other). The study may contribute to improving the design of integrated policies by controlling for the specificities of urban areas targeted by intervention.