Shopping is intimately tied to the shifting desires of the market and survival is premised on riding the waves of customer demand and cultural adaptation. Retail in general, and department stores particularly, are always facing obsolescence and the next new thing is always just around the corner. Shopping, rather than being a stable urban building block, is best described in terms of cycles, and measured in terms of life spans. Given the large footprint consumed by urban department stores within a city, the impact of those cycles to a downtown can be devastating when they change or die. This session will focus on creative ways that these large spaces are being re-used to strengthen cities' retail core and rebuild the urban fabric.