Retail centres occupy a significant role in determining the economic prosperity, desirability and vibrancy of urban areas. This research is rooted in a pragmatic effort to provide an overview of American retail centre geographies, through development of an empirically grounded framework, using data from SafeGraph, to examine where they are located, what characteristics they have, and who uses them. The resulting geographies are interesting, offering significant potential as a tool for monitoring and protecting the American retail system as is continues to evolve, and in yielding substantive insights about key theoretical debates in retail geography, made possible only through integration of the who, what and where.