The new types of work in the tertiary sector are often equally suited to both men and women. Some of the new services such as telephone call centres attract a high proportion of female labour for reasons, which include flexible working hours and locations near to residential areas.
However, old established service industries such as retailing have witnessed great changes as well. The traditional hierarchy of retailing has greatly changed in many urban areas today. One pattern of retailing is based on people’s willingness to travel to a shopping centre for higher value goods purchased less often such as household and electrical goods, clothes and shoes. Often these shopping centres are very large and located in suburban areas. They are then known as out-of-town centres. These large centres have become increasingly popular with many opening in just recent years. These centres are listed below:
Braehead, which is located near Glasgow, Scotland, is Scotland’s first big out-of-town centre. It has 100 shops.
The Trafford centre, is located in the outskirts of Manchester, and has 300+ shops.
Cribbs Causeway is located near Bristol and has 140 shops.
Bluewater, is possibly one of the biggest shopping centres in the UK today with 300+ shops. It is located near Dartford, Kent.
In the UK, local needs in areas of terraced housing are met by the corner shop and suburban shopping centres along the sides of a main road. On suburban housing estates a parade of shops, which was included in the building plans, fulfils the same function. Travelling to purchase higher order goods means a visit to the town centre. This pattern developed in the days of low private car ownership and reliance upon public transport, at a time when unmarried women were unlikely to go out to work. The Americans have always been ahead of Europeans in car ownership. Many of the trends in retailing observed in the USA in the 1960’s and 1970’s have been adopted in the UK and Europe from the late 1970’s, none more so than the switch to out-of-town shopping centres and malls. Nearly all the changes in patterns of retailing in the UK are a response to increased mobility allowed by higher private car ownership and use. An alternative hierarchy of retailing may better reflect shopping habits of many car lovers.
While the private car has been the catalyst for the retailing revolution, there are other factors that explain the changes in UK retailing industry. These changes are explained in the following paragraphs.
Mobility allowed by the private car. Car parking is expensive restricted in city centres; access in and out on congested roads is slow and stressful. Out-of-town retailing offers large and free car parks. Greenfield locations next to motorways speed up access. At the local level it is easier to pull of the road into a garage shop rather than at a corner shop or suburban shopping centre on a busy main road.
Shopping habits of people. Shopping for food or essentials has become a weekly or fortnightly habit. A lot can be packed into a car boot. Freezers allow food to be stored at home. Working women cannot go out and shop every day. This means that a large shop at an out-of town centre would be much more convenient as it would cover all typical shopping needs and allow people to buy their shopping less often and in large quantities.
Expectation from the shopping environment. A more pleasant shopping experience is desired, which has encouraged the growth of covered and indoor shopping centres. Fast food outlets and cinemas are attraction to some. As previously mentioned, many of the large out-of-town shopping centres are newly refurbished, meaning that they are often attractive, modern, clean and pleasant, giving the shopper an all round feel-good experience when shopping.
Organization of the retail industry. Only a few large supermarket companies remain and they are very competitive. Land is cheaper out of town and business rates are lower. Large units benefit from economies of scale, but the only way to attract lots of customers is to have good road access and large car parks.
Attitude of planners and politicians. Government policy is to now focus on new retail development in existing centres. Most of the 8 major out-of-town shopping centres want to build upon their success and expand. Some have been allowed a more modest expansion than they applied for, but the days of gaining easy planning permission to build on Greenfield sites, as in the 1970’s and 1980’s seem to be over for the moment, but this does not stop out-of-town centres trying.
Nationally there is a close relationship between the number of service sector jobs and the number of people in an area. Certain service industries are more specialized and less evenly distributed throughout the country, notably financial services. The historical heart is the ‘city’ of London, which houses the Bank Of England, Stock Exchange and Lloyd’s insurance within its square mile. The ‘City’ remains one of the world’s top three financial centres (New York and Frankfurt are the others). Within all urban areas, the greatest concentration of services is in large shopping centres. As in retailing and for many of the same reasons, there has been the drift of office employment from the city centre to the suburbs and rural fringes. In the UK, factories suffering from poor access and limited space in inner urban locations began the trend by moving into trading and industrial estates as early as the 1930’s. The early estates, such as Slough (West London), and Team Valley south of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, were developed as large concentrations of manufacturing industry. However, if you visit Team Valley today, the first thing you will see on leaving the A1 road is a Retail Park, to be followed by distribution centres, cash and carry outlets and the Royal Mail sorting office among the factories. On the industrial estate nearest to you, it is unlikely that all of its tenants are engaged in manufacturing. This is one of the reasons why the term Business Park is used more commonly now.
The rise of out-of-town office parks in the USA in the 1970’s coincided with the decline of large shopping centres in big cities into ugly and unsafe places populated only by the poor, the ones left behind by the flight of the middle classes to the suburbs. As middle-class Americans moved further away from town centres, they became less willing to commute long distances to work in what was becoming an increasingly unfriendly environment. The idea of the office park was born when developers began placing large, modern office buildings, in leafy landscaped surroundings, complete with plenty of car park space. One of their targets was an educated female workforce, whose skills would require high salaries to be attracted to work in this environment every day. In the UK, even though they are more likely to be called business parks they have the same features – a pleasant, modern and secure environment, allowing room for expansion. Nearness to a main road, almost certainly a motorway or dual carriageway, is considered to be a critical factor for a successful location.
