Spatial and Regional Economics Research Centre are pleased to invite you to a paper in our Lunchtime Speaker Series
Conor O’Driscoll Spatial and Regional Economics Research Centre, Cork University Business School will be presenting a paper called:
Retail Sprawl and CO2 emissions: Retail centres in Irish Cities
| Date | 3rd of November 2021 |
| Time | 12-1 pm |
| Location | Join the virtual event here |
About the paper
The concept of ‘sustainable retail development’ implies that retail centres should serve their communities economically and socially, while not degrading their local environment. However, existing literature identifies that retail centres often create negative externalities, impacting the sustainable development of both the core and peripheries of city regions. This paper adapts commuting data to estimate hypothetical shopping-related emissions incorporating residential locations and retail centre locations, within a multi modal transportation network. This analysis is performed at the Small Area level for Ireland's five major cities and their surrounding commuter belts. The retail centres analysed include existing and hypothetical sites. While existing sites capture current retail dynamics, hypothetical sites capture the potential environmental effect of future developments, based on current data. This hypothetical simulation assumed a new retail centre could be placed in each Small Area without an already existing retail centre, providing each Small Area with unique expected emissions estimates in the event of future retail developments, based on current data. The results show that existing retail centres generating the most emissions tend to be found outside city cores, in the fringe areas of built-up city environments, and that these retail centres are the most attractive in each region in terms of size and travel time. These same retail centres generally experience lower sustainable and active transport ridership, tending to only accommodate car users, supporting theories suggesting that accessibility-centred development is the best option to combat the ill effects of sprawl, and that car dependency worsens the environmental degradation associated with sprawling developments. Supporting this, the simulated analysis of hypothetical retail sites demonstrates the prevalence of car dependency in fringe retail environments by showing peripheral retail environments to generally cater to cars exclusively. This is reflected through excessive emission outputs and car usage as distances from city cores increase.
About the Speaker
Conor O’Driscoll is a PhD student in the Spatial and Regional Economics Research Centre, Cork University Business School. Conor’s supervisors are Prof. Justin Doran, Dr Frank Crowley, and Dr Nóirín McCarthy. Conor commenced his PhD in October 2020, and his PhD study is examining the economic and environmental effects of urban sprawl on Irish cities by addressing three inter-related questions:
- Can retail centre location-effects explain shopping-related travel emissions?
- How does local infrastructure influence commuting patterns and subsequent emission levels?
- Does remote working offer opportunities to counter urban sprawl’s negative environmental consequences?
