The city has both: the experience you create, and the customer’s experience of added value ‘Cities are dynamic, and over the centuries have continued to reinvent themselves to adapt to their time,’ says Rodenburg. ‘Simple market squares, with booths and hawkers surrounded by inns, developed into the city centres where the urban dwellers, visitors and entrepreneurs of today love to be. And even in the modern online economy, the inner city remains something indispensable. The city is, parallel to and in concert with the online world, a vital physical platform where you can find something for everyone: shops, restaurants, entertainment; home, work, public space and the built environment. The city is an experience writ large: a place where memorable moments happen, where people come together, where experience becomes meaningful.’

Helping each other transform

‘The authenticity of the city environment helps the parties in it to create new experiences. Against this backdrop, property owners provide the stage that retailers need, the place where they can act. Retailers, in turn, then play to the needs of their customers, and by doing that help the consumer to define themselves and become who they are,’ says Rodenburg. ‘It is in the city that all these ambitions and transformations come together. Municipalities, property owners and retailers who understand this will win in the fight for the consumer’s favour, with their unique locations, unique buildings and unique product ranges. Creativity is critical here. I see myself as a driver of this transformation. By connecting property, retail and the consumer in the inner city, both locally and online, to the experience economy, we create physical added value in the inner city, in the form of attraction and transaction.’