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The decline in the importance of central area in large cities particularly for retailing activity, presents a problem of management and planning if the role of the centre is to be maintained. In order to undestrand the nature and extent of retailing activity, it is necessary to undertake a detailed and periodic analysis of the various related components, namely retail outlets, retail expenditure and shopping behaviour. The present study for which the methodology is presented here, is extremely thorough. Againts a general background of an increase in retail expenditure, it appears that the CBD has maintained its position, while the periphery has increased its attraction and the rest of the core area and inner ring of the suburbs have declined. One unespected result of the survey was the high degree of rationality displayed by the city's inhabitants in making their purchases. However, such details can only be ascertained by undertaking successive surveys, for which the methodology presented here is unique in France.

Urban dynamics are partly measurable in studying trade function of city-center and spatial importance of custom influence. In Chalon-sur-Saône, commercial function is specially devolved on city-center and changes in a way of specialization and quality. So city-center has become stakes of economic and politic strategies. Particularly in middle-size towns, trade influence replaces towns in their regional space, and allows to build up an urban and hierarchical network which escapes to a range-size study. In the studied region to compare it with a theoritical and gravity model brings out urban system anomalies and explains shape variations of urban influence areas. However in a region where metallurgy knows problems able to knock down local employment, it is quite out of question to cut off urban trade function — in spite of its actual strength — from local economic context. Every restrictive consequence contributes to reduce trade dynamics, along with the regional part of a middle-size town.

Saint-Etienne has grown up as a 19th century town with coal and steel industries. For some years, economic problems and town planning have changed the social and spatial frames of the town. This paper attempts to assess the impact of this process on the development of the city-center which faces the setting up of a 38 000 m² regional commercial center. The main effects are the development of the pedestrian precinct, the improvement of commercial activities and the accentuation of the linear draft in the city-center. Nevertheless, some of the former features are persistant, as partition between popular and middle class commercial structures.

Is the Left Side on its way to becoming part of the city centre, resulting from the creation of a pole of directional activities at the Part-Dieu ? That is what we tried to determine by surveying the neighbouring area. Only in the main arteries near the Rhone did trade reach in 1981 a level almost comparable to that of the Presqu'île (the traditional city centre). The increase in traffic and exchanges caused by the development of the new business centre allowed the commercial undertakings to compete with the Presqu'île and the suburban shopping centres on better terms, at the cost of reduced employment, and concurrently with an improvement in the commercial level. But up to 1981, there were but few changes in the commercial vocation of the area and the associative trend, which materialized after the opening of the Part-Dieu Regional Shopping Centre, rapidly got obscured.

The Part-Dieu Regional Shopping Centre opened in 1975, in the very heart of a modern business complex, some little distance from Lyon's traditional city centre. Its impressive dimensions (it is the largest in Europe, with its 110,000 square metres) and the efforts devoted to its conception and its promotion concurred to give it a quasi mythical aura of prestige when it was inaugurated. However, after the first installations, its progression was very slow till it was served by a branch line of the underground railway. It has now undergone a number of changes, turning to more and more leisure activities.

With a total of 42 different sites (exclusive of 5 specialised sites), markets realize 12,5 % of the total amount of food purchases in Lyon. This score shows the importance of a urban market geography including historical dynamics, socio-economical and socio-spatial components so as to prepare an analysis by rank and network.

The « tianguis » is the most ancient form of market in Mexico. The Tlaxcala « tianguis » is equivalent, one time a week, to a stationery retail center. The present analysis appraises its urban and regional functions, with a particular emphasis on the different kinds of deals within.

The Lyons Chamber of Commerce card-index оf trading centres has allowed to establish a map showing the hierarchy of commercial concentrations and their distribution in the central and pericentral space of the town. The interest of the cartographic method comes from a synthetical simple graphism (nucleus) for traditional punctual notations.