The thesis focuses attention on the unbalanced demand and supply of activity spaces in urban market places, resulting in the congestion of people and vehicles in selected Nigerian market places. A review of existing approaches to retail analyses shows that none offer a sufficient explanation of this phenomenon in a manner that can be useful for planning purposes. This is because, (i) None of these approaches contains explicit inclusion of time in its structure, and (ii) They are designed to predict what is likely to happen as a result of some assumptions, and not the possible range of performance in relation to defined locational and structural potential of the urban market places. A new approach to retail study, which includes the above two factors, is then proposed on these assumptions: (1) That there is strong hierarchical relationship between any pair of demand and supply of activity spaces, (a) for food shopping; (b) for non-food shopping, in an urban market place; (2) That there is strong multiple causal relationship between the growth rate of any demand or supply of activity space, and the locational and structural potential in the urban market place. Case study materials from Kaduna city market places are used to calibrate the equations arising from the propositions 1 (a & b), and 2. The relationships were found to be strong. Examination of the calibrated hierarchical and causal relationships revealed unbalanced distribution, and disproportionate growth rates, of the demand and supply of activity spaces in Kaduna city market places. Four alternative planning strategies were generated. The performance of each over and above the trend strategy, in achieving balanced demand and supply of activity spaces, and in optimising the locational and structural potential in the market places, was evaluated with equations 2 and 1(a & b). The strategy that achieved the best performance, together with the plan management requirements, was recommended as the adopted plan for the market places in the city.

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