In a near-complete reversal of the suburban expansion of the 1950s, urban dwellers now outnumber their suburban counterparts, forcing retailers around the world to adapt. That is according to Gene Spiegelman, vice chairman and head of North America Retail Services for Cushman & Wakefield, who recently chatted with GlobeSt.com in celebration of our 15th anniversary.

“This urban pilgrimage has impacted commercial real estate in countless ways,” he says. “Post-recession, retailers from abroad are flocking to the Americas—and vice versa—in search of new market segments to capture.”

Spiegelman notes that “Rising rents in premier urban corridors are pushing some brands to the periphery of those neighborhoods. In cities like New York, the rental value of ground-floor retail space in high-rise mixed-use buildings often exceeds the total aggregate value of the floors above.”

These costs, he explains, “may be prohibitive for some retailers, and taken together with limited supply, can squeeze those retailers out of preeminent high streets for alternative space that's close in proximity to the main and better-known thoroughfares.”

Among those retailers who remain in the highest-rent districts, Spiegelman says, limited space in urban cores is leading brands to push the boundaries of what constitutes prime market space.

In Manhattan, for example, Spiegelman is seeing the boundaries of traditional markets expand. “For example, in the Financial District the prime retail stretch of Broadway continually moves north to the Insurance District. In Flatiron, we see expansion of apparel retailing from Fifth Avenue east to Broadway. In Times Square, the market is moving to the south side of 42nd Street from Avenue of the Americas into the Garment District.”