The best-known and the most visually distinctive area of most cities is downtown, which is known to geographers by the more precise term central business district (CBD). The CBD is one of the oldest districts in a city, usually at or near the original site of the settlement. The CBDs of older cities are often situated along a body of water, a principal transportation route prior to the twentieth century.

The CBD is compact—less than 1 percent of the urban land area—but contains a large percentage of the public, business, and consumer services. Services are attracted to the CBD because of its accessibility. The CBD is the easiest part of the city to reach from the rest of the region and is the focal point of the region’s transportation network.

Mobile Alabama, CBD

Public Services in CBDs

Public services typically located in a CBD include government offices, libraries, and museums. These facilities historically clustered downtown, in many cases in substantial structures. Today, many remain in the CBD to facilitate access for people living in all parts of town. Similarly, semipublic services such as places of worship and social service agencies also cluster downtown in handsome historic structures.

Public Service in Mobile CBD

The History Museum of Mobile.

Central Business District

Sports facilities and convention centers have been constructed or expanded downtown in many cities. These structures attract a large number of people, including many suburbanites and out-of-towners. Cities place these facilities in the CBD because they hope to stimulate more business for downtown restaurants, bars, and hotels.

Consumer Services in CBDs

In the past, three types of retail services clustered in a CBD because they required accessibility to everyone in the region: retailers with high thresholds, those with high range, and those that served people working in the CBD. Changing shopping habits and residential patterns have reduced the importance of retail services in the CBD.

Retailers With High Thresholds

Retailers with high thresholds, such as department stores, traditionally preferred a CBD location in order to be accessible to many people. Large department stores in the CBD would cluster near one intersection, which was known as the “100 percent corner.” Rents were highest there because that location had the highest accessibility for the most customers. Most high-threshold shops such as large department stores have closed their downtown branches. Below shows the location of Mobile’s former department store Gayfers. CBDs that once boasted three or four stores now have none, or perhaps one struggling survivor. The customers for downtown department stores now consist of downtown office workers, inner-city residents, and tourists. Department stores with high thresholds are now more likely to be in suburban malls.

Retailers with High Ranges

High-range retailers are often specialists, with customers who patronize them infrequently. These retailers once preferred CBD locations because their customers were scattered over a wide area. For example, a jewelry or clothing store attracted shoppers from all over the urban area, but each customer visited infrequently. Like those with high thresholds, high-range retailers have moved with department stores to suburban locations.

Some retailers with high ranges have located in CBDs because they are visited by tourists. Local residents also patronize shops and restaurants in the CBD as a leisure activity on evenings and weekends.

Consumer Service in Mobile CBD

Dauphin Street shops.

Retailers Serving CBD Workers

A third type of retail activity in the CBD serves the many people who work in the CBD and shop during lunch or working hours. These retailers sell office supplies, computers, and clothing or offer shoe repair, rapid photocopying, dry cleaning, and so on. In contrast to the other two types of retailers, shops that appeal to nearby office workers are expanding in the CBD, in part because the number of downtown office workers has increased and in part because downtown offices require more services. Patrons of downtown shops tend increasingly to be downtown employees who shop during the lunch hour.

Thus, although the total volume of sales in downtown areas has been stable, the pattern of demand has changed. Large department stores have difficulty attracting their old customers, whereas smaller shops that cater to the special needs of the downtown labor force are expanding.

Business Services in CBDs

Offices cluster in a CBD for accessibility. People in business services such as advertising, banking, finance, journalism, and law particularly depend on proximity to professional colleagues. Lawyers, for example, choose locations near government offices and courts. Services such as temporary secretarial agencies and instant printers locate downtown to be near lawyers, forming a chain of interdependency that continues to draw offices to the center city.

Even with the diffusion of modern telecommunications, many professionals still exchange information with colleagues primarily through face-to-face contact. Financial analysts discuss attractive stocks or impending corporate takeovers. Lawyers meet to settle disputes out of court. Offices are centrally located to facilitate rapid communication of fast-breaking news through spatial proximity. Face-to-face contact also helps establish a relationship of trust based on shared professional values.

A central location also helps businesses that employ workers from a variety of neighborhoods. Top executives may live in one neighborhood, junior executives in another, secretaries in another, and custodians in still another. Only a central location is readily accessible to all groups. Firms that need highly specialized employees are more likely to find them in the central area, perhaps currently working for another company downtown.

Pause & Reflect 13.1.2

Do you ever spend time in a CBD? If so, for what reasons? If not, why not?