An important challenge is to get all stakeholders to pull together to strengthen their city centres.

Many cities have the ambition to strengthen their city centres, while at the same time the city centers are losing market shares to external shopping areas. Local and unique retailers inside the city centers must make way for retail parks outside the city centers. This trend is leading to increasing vacancy rates in the inner cities. However, commercial vacancy in the commercial centres lowers the city's image and reduces its attractiveness. Within this network we want to focus on how city centres can win back local retailers and services that makes the city centre a vibrant city and a high quality shopping area which attracts people (locals and visitors). Policy makers need a guideline in order to strengthen their city centers. Without changing the policy, it is expected that retail areas outside the city centre will keep on expanding. An important challenge is to get all stakeholders to pull together to strengthen their city centres. The retail and wholesale services sector is one of the most important in the EU economy and should play an important part in stimulating growth and job creation under the Europe 2020 strategy. The retail sector is undergoing a dramatic transformation due to the rapid development of e-commerce. However, in many EU countries the regulatory framework was put in place decades ago and has not been adapted to the digital age.