By Dr. Tony Hernandez, Tansel Erguden and Andrew Murray

For more than a decade the evolution of power retailing has been the focus of numerous CSCA studies. Over this period the development and clustering of large format or ‘big box’ retailers into a variety of functional forms has driven retail change across much of Canada. The CSCA has been at the forefront of tracking and reporting on the increasing penetration and integration of big box retailers across different location types (in power centres and within shopping malls). Power centres continue to contribute a large proportion of the total retail space in Canada and are home to the largest concentrations of big box retailers. The purpose of this research letter is to provide an update on the growth of big boxes, power centres and power nodes in Canada, with particular focus on the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). It should be noted that due to the rapid development of the big box format across Canada the definition and classification of power retail developments are subject to periodic updating to reflect their role and function in the retail economy. This research letter provides a snap-shot of power retailing across Canada at the end of 2012 based on in-house data collected by the CSCA through field survey.