In the vast literature on planning and redevelopment in the UK after World War II, attention to the retail sector has been minimal at best—that is, until Alstair Kefford’s The Life and Death of the Shopping City. This is an admirable study in its chronological range, the breadth of contributing factors considered, and the level of detail explored. Complementing the book’s chronological arrangement is a meticulous ordering of the text by topic. Numerous case studies afford insights well beyond what generalities covering national trends can accomplish. Kefford has mined a sweeping array of period documents and an equally impressive spectrum of recent scholarly literature. And what in many hands could be a rather dry subject is presented in an engaging and eminently readable form. The Life and Death of the Shopping City promises to be an essential text on the history of twentieth-century urbanism in Great Britain for years to come.

World War II’s legacy of bombed city centers in the UK ensured the central role of planning in the years that followed, with considerable powers bestowed upon the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, established in 1943. In approving redevelopment schemes, the ministry’s role was, in effect, to strike a balance between visionary schemes advanced at the local level and the practical needs of retailers, who continued to experience a rise in consumption that had begun in the 1920s. Achieving that balance was no easy matter. Kefford reveals the ongoing tension among local authorities, often competing with one another in drives for regional supremacy and between them and the ministry. Ultimately, the process greatly favored chains and other major retail operations, with great numbers of small-scale merchants forced to relocate in more remote locations or close their businesses altogether.

By the early 1950s, retail building began in earnest. Some of these buildings were created by newly formed development companies such as Arndale. They worked closely with local authorities and were funded by business interests that saw these projects as a new opportunity for investment. Many of the initiatives entailed large individual buildings—department and variety stores, especially—which transformed the landscape of many of Britain’s primary shopping streets by the decade’s end. A significant shift toward a more comprehensive approach to town and city center redevelopment occurred a decade later—a shift endorsed by national authorities across the political spectrum. A pioneering example begun in the late 1950s was the redevelopment of the entire town center of Shepley undertaken by Arndale. Toward the end of this project, the developer built the Arndale Shopping Center, a modest-sized enclosed mall, which included a supermarket and other self-service stores—all inspired by American examples (several studies by Richard Longstreth, not cited in Kefford’s bibliography, lend insight on related retail development in the US: City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 [Cambridge, MA, 1997]; The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941 [Cambridge, MA, 1999]; and The American Department Store Transformed, 1920-1960, [New Haven, 2010]). Soon, far more ambitious projects began to emerge in cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, and Leeds, encompassing a number of blocks on which arose office buildings and parking garages as well as great quantities of retail space. Such developments intensified the trends of displacing small-scale merchants and also non-retail functions of all sorts, giving urban centers a one-dimensional role that had never before existed. The scope and cost of such ambitious, multi-year undertakings necessitated specialist developers, who replaced major store companies as the agents of change.

Those developers fervently touted the safety and convenience of a fully controlled, enclosed environment, one that also sheltered shoppers from the abundance of rainy days that permeated the country. The mall was touted as being conductive to family shopping excursions, with bowling alleys, cinemas, and other recreational diversions to enhance the experience. Additional public amenities, including libraries and clinics, were planned for some of these complexes as well. An abundance of open space could be adapted to accommodate exhibitions, meetings, festivities, and lectures. But the mall had its limitations as a civic arena. Security was a paramount concern among retailers and managers, and after-hours events were frequently seen as incurring unwarranted expense. Members of the public hoped mall circulation spaces that had replaced streets would remain accessible at all times, a condition business interests strenuously resisted. For all the effort put into staging displays and other events that would encourage purchasing, many consumers found the high-end stores that dominated shopping centers to be unnecessary and unaffordable. Unlike major shopping centers in the US, which were subjected to detailed market analysis in their planning stage, British counterparts suffered from a dearth of information gathered about their potential clientele.

Much to his credit, Kefford analyzes the decline of the large urban shopping center as well as its rise. He also introduces a sequel, as it were: huge, sprawling “shopping cities,” of which the MetroCentre, opened in 1986 outside Newcastle, was the first. Here, where layout was unencumbered by urban configurations, the density of building remained high compared with large regional malls in the US. And while the latter contingent were carefully sited in relation of existing and projected residential development, British counterparts were isolated—accessed by motorways, but resting in open areas mandated by regional planning dictates.

Shopping City deserves an audience wider than historians, geographers, and others interested in postwar planning and redevelopment. Kefford’s broad and acute analysis should prove engaging to academics and professionals of many stripes who are concerned with the modern city in all of its complex and ever-changing permutations.