New York's Madison Avenue, however, tops the list with rents averaging $5,920 per square metre annually. Hong Kong's Causeway Bay has been pushed to second place with rents averaging $5,835 per square metre. London moved up from fourth to third position after a 25 per cent jump in Oxford Street rents to $5,031 per square metre. Paris has dropped from the fourth slot to the fifth slot.

Interestingly, Mumbai never managed to make the list till this year, a clear indication that the island city is in the grip of a price spiral. Ironically, real estate prices have been witnessing a downward trend but that has done little to offset the fact that Mumbai, even today, remains India's most expensive city.

The 11th annual survey indicates that the world's retail markets enjoyed a bumper yearwith prime rents rising in more than half of the 193 locations in 39 countries.

Athens and Zurich too have climbed up to eighth and ninth positions The new entrants during the year include Downtown Santiago in Chile (16) and Helsinki (22).

The survey reveals that during the year some city centres have featured amongst the most expensive shopping locations. These include Helsinki, Bratislava in Slovakia (35), Mumbai and Bangkok (37).

The shopping streets which have moved down on the `most expensive' ranks include Moscow's Trade House Gum (from 3 to 5), Singapore's Orchard Road (7 to 12), The Galleria in Istanbul (15 to 32) and Bangkok city centre (24 to 37).

Although retail rents are up by an average of just 1 per cent across the world, growth patterns have been increasingly uneven in recent months.

"The Americas and Europe saw the biggest rises, while financial instability in the Asia-Pacific region and Eastern Europe has affected confidence in the retail market," the survey adds.

Most of Europehas experienced an economic and property market upswing in the past year, the survey sayd adding that emerging markets in Hungary, Greece and Turkey are showing vigorous demand and growth, matched by a robust level of performance in the more mature markets including UK, France, Italy and Sweden.

According to the survey, one notable feature of the year was the huge rise in cross-border retail activity, particularly across Europe. "The European shopping centre market also remains active with good occupier demand and ongoing development activity," it states. Tighter planning regulations in many areas are beginning to pinch, it added.

On shopping centre developments trends, the survey states that there is approximately 69 million square metres of gross lettable floor space in shopping centres of 5,000 square metres and above in central, eastern and western Europe. "There is also an estimated 8.2 million square metres of floor space due to be completed by the year 2000," it adds.