Trend Spotting... With this first issue of 2005, PikeNet begins its tenth year of publishing. (This is issue number 813.) Wow, it doesn't seem possible.

Twice each week, I try to capture your interest with fresh perspectives on commercial real estate. So over the past two weeks I've (mentally) cleared the decks for the forthcoming year by traveling to France. What a delightful jolt.

Our family -- wife, two daughters and son-in-law -- spent the Holiday Season in Paris, where our youngest daughter teaches at the American School, and in Normandy, visiting the D-Day Beaches.

If you're like me, you have fun looking at a new country through a real estate lens. So as we drove into Paris from the airport, I kept thinking to myself, How can all these miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers) of tiny shops survive?

After all, how much stuff can you sell from a shop of, say, 250 or 500 square feet (23 to 46 square meters)? How can you buy goods, pay rent and compensate employees -- and still make a profit?

And we saw exactly the same blend of smaller shops in downtown Bayeux, a small town in Normandy. Of course, real estate is just one part of a complex economic and social equation in any society. And France does have huge "hypermarkets" on the periphery of many cities.

It's not just that French streetscapes are so alive commercially. It's also that, culturally, folks seem to like to walk to do their shopping. So one-stop, US-style neighborhood shopping centers don't seem to draw away downtown business -- even though prices (presumably) are significantly cheaper.

Last year Dyan and I (post-kids) bought a new house where we can walk to the grocery store, drugstore, bank, post office and restaurants, just like Paris -- well, that's a stretch. But are there many people like us? Do Americans want to integrate residential and commercial living?

--Peter Pike