The Footfall of Shopping Centres in Olomouc (Czech Republic): an Application of the Gravity Model

The issue of the footfall of large retail facilities in the city of Olomouc is treated in this article from the perspective of spatial interaction modelling. A production-constrained gravity model is applied to reveal spatial patterns of shopping travel intensities in the city. Three problems are addressed: the existing pattern and intensities of flows to the shopping centres; the prediction of possible future changes in these patterns and intensities; and inferences about hypothetical sizes of shopping centres according to some defined conditions.