We are continuing our series of topic stakeholder events, where we discuss a key topic to be addressed by City Plan 2030 (such as housing or visitor accommodation) and invite people who work in these areas and are a way of sharing and gaining knowledge in these topics, with our next event on the shopping and leisure sector in Edinburgh. At this seminar we would like to share early findings of our market research in this sector.
This includes the work we already do to keep track of retail floorspace, empty units and types of shops. For example, we conduct a survey of all shop units in the city to look at the health of the retail sector and see how our shopping policies are working.
All shops are surveyed every five years while the city centre and our 8 town centres are surveyed once a year.
In recent years, there has been a decrease in the number of ‘comparison goods’ shops (where shoppers buy from less often, and will compare prices, features and quality between products and shops before buying) and at the same time an increase in non-retail uses such as hair salons, cafes and restaurants.
The number of vacant units has fallen in recent years, across the city and in most of our town centres. The supplementary guidance we use to set out where and how other uses, such as food and drink, are to be allowed in our centres plays a key role in this by encouraging other uses in the right places to reduce the number of empty units as the shopping and leisure market changes.
We also review our guidance when needed and ask for your views on what kind of uses we should allow and where.
Watch this space for more on our shopping and leisure seminar! In the meantime you can keep track of City Plan 2030 by:
- Visiting the website at edinburgh.gov.uk/cityplan2030
- Subscribing to this blog at https://planningedinburgh.com
- Following us on twitter at @planningedin
- Join in the conversation by using the #cityplan2030 hashtag
- Subscribe to the newsletter by emailing us at cityplan2030@edinburgh.gov.uk
Planning Edinburgh 
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