Var ligger handeln? : Handelsområdens lokalisering relaterat till befolkning och centrum i svenska kommuner

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines the geographical location of retail areas in Swedish municipalitiesin relation to municipal centres and the spatial distribution of the population. The aimis to analyse the degree of external retailing by developing a quantitative external retailmeasurment based on the distance between the municipal centre, the employment-weighted centre of retail areas, and the population-weighted centre of eachmunicipality. The study uses geodata from Statistics Sweden, including statistical retailareas, population data, and municipal classifications, together with socioeconomicvariables such as population size, population density, income, car ownership,employment rate, and population change.The results show that the external retail measurment varies considerably betweenSwedish municipalities. Higher values are mainly found in metropolitan and moreurban municipalities, while rural and sparsely populated municipalities generally showlower values. The analysis also indicates positive and statistically significantcorrelations between the measurement and population size, population density,average income, and population growth. In contrast, car ownership per capita shows anegative correlation with the measurement, which may reflect structural differencesbetween urban and rural municipalities rather than a direct relationship between cardependence and external retailing.However, some overlap between categories suggests that the study measures adifferent dimension: the geographical centre of retail activity in relation to populationand centre, rather than simply the presence or absence of external retail areas. Overall,the study demonstrates that external retailing is most prominent in larger, growing,and more urban municipalities, and that the developed measurment can be used as acomparative tool for analysing retail geography in Sweden.