Intelligent Space takes an evidence based approach to the assessment of economic viability for shops, restaurants, cafes and other commercial locations in our Retail Healthcheck appraisal.

ISP has unique experience in the analysis of pedestrian behaviour in diverse environments, including shopping centres and markets as well as urban and suburban high streets. Our evidence based approach enables us to identify quantitatively which land uses or tenants a site could potentially sustain.

Each land use requires a different minimum number of pedestrians as "passing trade" to support their business. Different tenants also have different needs for the numbers of pedestrians, with the more famous name-brand retailers needing higher flows than independent stores. Through our Retail Healthcheck we can identify what this “passing trade” requirement is to inform strategic decisions on land use & transport planning.

How does Intelligent Space's Retail Healthcheck work?

Intelligent Space has developed a unique database of pedestrian flow counts and land use information for both urban and suburban locations. From this database we can resolve questions such as:

• What land uses are present at different levels of pedestrian flow?
• Which locations are selected by individual tenants?
• What is range of pedestrian flows on streets where tenants are based?

We have in our database over 3000 buildings of different land use classes and over 750 streets have been sampled for pedestrian flows.

Benefits

Intelligent Space's Retail Healthcheck unlocks the value of a site and reduces risk in development plans by:

• Providing real world benchmarks of how many pedestrians are needed for each planned use.
• Providing evidence for planning submissions and planning inquiries on local economic development.
• Showing comparable sites that have the same characteristics.

Intelligent Space's Retail Healthcheck has been used by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to inform the urban design of Golborne Road market area.