From retail polarities to superplaces

Over the past century in the theories of central places shops and services have been significant features of the traditional core of the city. But the localization strategies of large retailing chains have changed: moving from the city to the metropolitan - or post-metropolitan – space. For this reason some of the interpretative categories we usually deal with have to be updated. This paper is aimed at explaining the relevance of the concept of commercial polarities to understand the transformations in the retail formats and in their localization and at focusing on some exceptional “superplaces”. This research could be the key to comprehend the double role of those polarities – product and producer of changes - in the contemporary metropolitan areas.