URB&COM – Retail and Urban Planning Lab

URB&COM works within consolidated urban areas and suburban territories and it develops activities related with academic research and consultancy focusing the transformation and management of those spaces. The main field relies on the process of modernization of the retail sector and all those other activities which often interact with the retail, as the cultural and creative ones, touristic, etc. and their territorial effects in terms of economic development and attraction power.
Recently, the Laboratorio increased its research interests involving other kind of phenomena, as networks of food production-distribution and the impact of IT in consumption practices. Other research activities rely on: (i) regulative processes related with the localization of retail activities at different scales, (ii) active policies for the re-activation of urban retail, also within actions and programs of urban regeneration and (iii) assessment and benchmarking focuses within the national and transnational framework.
Since 1998, URB&COM braces academic research activity with the technical and scientific support to public institutions, local governments, public agencies and private actors in setting up strategic and design guidelines, and the Laboratorio acts as services’ provider and consultant.

URB&COM is the only Italian academic structure that focuses the relationships between planning and retail with a technic-scientific approach based on urban planning, geography and economy, with a strong involvement in education, research and applied research. Principal profiles and skills within the Laboratorio are:

• Creation of interpretative analyses and thematic maps through GIS software aimed at defining the distribution of urban and suburban retail poles (definition of catchment areas, profiling customers’ behaviors, recognition of urban densification of retail services, etc.)
• Innovation in data collection (methodologies, analysis and surveys) about urban activities related with tertiary sector, aimed at using them to set up actions of urban regeneration and improvement of local economies and retail systems.
• Support regional and local government drafting (a) strategic and regulatory tools for urban retail services and other tertiary activities and (b) planning guidelines aimed at integrating the localization of retail activities within the processes of territorial governance.