This study shows that in the past decades retailing in Germany experienced profound changes in the supply structure combined with massive shifts in shops' locations. Until the end of the 1950s the locational structure was decisively influenced by the spatial distribution of demand. Changes in demand, especially due to consumers' increased mobility, gave retail businesses a relatively free choice of locations. In more recent decades spatial development was mainly determined by changes in the types of retailing and their typical locational preferences. During this period, new non-integrated shopping locations developed and there were trends of thinning out in scattered locations and of a decrease in importance of the integrated subcentres. Since these shifts have adversely affected the centres' structure and have conflicted with social and political goals, planners and politicians have increasingly taken account of spatial development in retailing. They try to minimise the negative effects of the restructuring.
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