By Dr. Tony Hernandez and Ron Buliung

This report is a pioneering effort to juxtapose information on travel patterns in the Greater Toronto Area with information on the distribution and format of retailing, and further, to compare insights from that process to growth management efforts in the Toronto region.  It describes the rise of power retailing, identifies the geographical distribution of power centres in the Greater Toronto Area, and traces consumer travel patterns associated with shopping within the region.  The report argues that planners and policy-makers need to pay closer attention to the interaction of retailing and transportation.  The retail sector represents more than a quarter of gross domestic product in Canada, and employs more than one in every ten Canadians.  Meanwhile, data from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey suggest that travel for weekday shopping is not only increasing, but growing more rapidly than travel for other purposes.