Transforming Retail Economics of Neighborhood Development

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• How to use cutting-edge analytics and modeling to identify where retail investments can spur improvements in commercial areas and neighborhoods
• Techniques for sophisticated survey collection, modeling, and online data visualization
• How different groups value different corridor characteristics and how that impacts shopping decisions

MORE SESSION DETAILS

A new retail store or restaurant can bolster a neighborhood, cascading benefits on the residents ranging from access to healthy food to increased property values and safer streets. The TREND project is founded on two large, difficult-to-answer questions: How does the addition of a store affect shoppers’ choice of where to shop, and how does that new store impact the process of neighborhood change? These questions are vital to both retail analysts and urban policy makers. To provide answers, the Chicago TREND team developed a suite of data and analytical tools, including an online survey tool that allowed respondents to identify where they live, work, and shopped; cutting-edge analytical models to predict who will shop in a given corridor and who will live in the neighborhood; and interactive data-visualization tools. At the heart of the research is an online data-visualization and simulation tool that allows users to add hypothetical stores to a commercial corridor and then predict who will shop at each corridor and how the local neighborhood will change as a result. Participants will learn about the data and analytical tools that underpin TREND as well as how the models have worked in practice.