Page 147 - DMGT552_VISUAL_MERCHANDISING

Visual Merchandising

Notes
Figure 7.1: Layout of a Retail Store

Source: http://www.redmond.k12.or.us/145520121313341393/lib/145520121313341393/Ch_18_
notes_ONLINE.pdf
A circulation plan is the plan that shows the location and types of facilities for all modes of
transportation required for the efficient movement of people and goods into, about, and through
the specified medium from one location to another.
In general, a circulation plan is a schematic empirical projection/model of how pedestrians
and/or motor vehicles flow through a given area.

Example: A neighbourhood or a Central Business District (CBD).
Circulation plans are used by city planners and other officials to manage and monitor traffic and
pedestrian patterns in such a way that they might discover how to make future improvements
to the system.

The two types of people most cognisant of circulation plans are developers and local city and
county planning officials. New multi-family residential developments, for example, introduce
increased volume (and thus density) of traffic flows into their vicinity.

!
Caution City planners might analyse this projected impact and justify charging higher
impact fees.
In other cases, local residents lobbying against a new development might use circulation plans
to justify the denial of a development’s building permit, citing decreased quality due to
overcrowding, noise pollution, traffic, and so on.
Good city planners do their best to use main thoroughfares and so on to draw commuter traffic
out of local neighbourhoods (where excessive traffic is seen by local voters as undesirable) and
onto larger roads, which often utilise considerable buffers like setback land and vegetation to
divorce non-local (commuter) traffic from local (neighbourhood) traffic.
Circulation plan is the silent guide. Once customer is inside the store, he needs to be guided
silently to where to go, also to expose entire store offerings. It can be achieved by planning the
circulation and the location of merchandise.

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