How to Make Dowtown Attrative Again America
Does your city accept a long-range downtown plan?
Does your city have a downtown development corporation, a downtown alliance, or similar not-profit organization that is focused solely on promoting downtown as a destination for businesses, residents, and development?
Does your city have public policies (like tax abatements, grants, and other special incentives) to promote downtown evolution?
Hopefully, y'all answered 'yes' to the questions higher up. But even if you answered 'no' to each question, and your urban center doesn't have any official programme in identify to assist brand your downtown a more than vibrant urban identify, at that place are withal lots of strategies your customs can pursue to improve the urban vitality of your downtown. That's what this mail service is all nearly.
Below are 12 strategies that tin transform your city's downtown into a thriving urban district. For each strategy, you'll see a curtailed explanation of how the strategy will make your downtown more vibrant and one or two examples of cities that have successfully implemented the strategy.
Past the way, if you're interested in reading more about the importance of downtown to your city, please see my 3-role blog series on The Most Prosperous Downtowns of the 21st Century where I analyzed how the downtown areas of the 100 largest cities have fared over the past decade.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #1
Plow 1-way streets into two-manner streets.
King Street: Charleston, SC
Why?
I-way streets are cracking if your only goal is to channel traffic through your downtown, but they are bad for pedestrian activity and retail opportunities. Two-mode streets create a more comfy pedestrian surroundings and accept been shown to increment property values.
There is a good reason that the Main Streets that sit at the urban core of pocket-size towns and cities beyond the U.S. are almost e'er two-way streets. From Wichita, KS to Charleston, SC, cities across the U.S. are realizing the benefits of two-way streets in their urban cores.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #2
Establish a regularly occurring public event that showcases downtown merchants, music, and food.
Wedlock Square Farmers Marketplace: New York, NY
Why?
Ongoing public events help bulldoze positive sensation of your city's downtown. Bringing people from your entire metropolis downtown on a regular ground, once a week or fifty-fifty just once a month, serves to brand citizens aware of the unique civilities that be in the cardinal office of their community.
Events like a weekly farmers market (like the Matrimony Square Farmers Market in NYC) or a monthly fine art walk (many cities have a "First Friday Fine art Walk" like the i in Denver) tin depict thousands of people to your downtown on a regular basis. And many of these people do not live or work almost downtown, so by creating the event, yous tin can expose a wider portion of your customs to the unique avails located in your urban core. These citizens are then more likely to visit downtown for shopping/dining/entertainment on other occasions and are more likely to consider living downtown or perhaps locating their business organization downtown. An added do good of these types of events is that they appoint local merchants, artists, and entrepreneurs, helping to brand these businesspeople champions for downtown revitalization.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #3
Create more than land for development (landfill into a body of water, remove state from a floodplain, take dorsum land from a throughway, etc).
Battery Park City: New York, NY
Why?
If yous could literally expand your city's downtown by creating more land surface area for new downtown evolution, you would jump at the opportunity, correct?
Well, if your metropolis is one of the lucky ones that sits next to an ocean, you might be able to use landfill to aggrandize the state area of your downtown, as New York City did with its Battery Park Metropolis neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. In fact, Bombardment Park City was congenital on xc acres of landfill created from more than than 1.2 million cubic yards earth that was excavated from the original World Trade Centre site.
Simply this isn't the only way to create more than country for development. How about that floodplain land in your downtown? You could make some infrastructure investments that accept some of that land out of the floodplain, opening upward more than acreage for downtown evolution. That'due south what Austin is doing with its Waller Creek projection, a major initiative that will rejuvenate the currently underutilized waterway that runs through the eastern section of the city's downtown.
Or what nigh that massive freeway that runs along the edge of your downtown? You lot could tear it downwardly and build a park in its place like Portland did in its downtown.
Or you could sink it and cover information technology with a park like Dallas did.
Or yous could sink it and comprehend information technology with a park and a convention center similar Seattle.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #4
Make under-utilized public land available for private sector evolution
Seaholm Ability Plant Redevelopment: Austin, TX
Why?
All types of government (federal, state, and local) ain real estate assets. Sometimes these "assets" are not doing any practiced for the authorities entity that owns them or for the community they sit down in. Structures like vacant government function buildings, abandoned power plants, and other obsolete public facilities in your city's downtown are ofttimes prime candidates for redevelopment by the private sector.
Cheque out how Austin is using its defunct Seaholm power found as the centerpiece of a new mixed-use downtown evolution.
Or, take a await at what the individual sector has done with a former simple school in Portland, turning it into a hotel/microbrewery (this i is non downtown-specific but illustrates the strategy so well, I had to include it).
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #5
Consolidate regional economic development partner organizations into a single downtown location.
Business Resource Center: San Angelo, TX
Why?
Information technology may seem like an inconsequential determination but the location of government offices and community-serving organizations matters. This is even more important for organizations that interact with the exterior concern earth like chambers of commerce and economic development organizations. Of form, public decisions to identify jobs downtown are beneficial, but in this case, we're talking about the prototype that is portrayed to the exterior world.
What type of message exercise you think information technology sends when a city'due south economic development corporation is located in a big-box strip center, or when the local bedroom of commerce is housed in the upstairs of a convenience store? (Yes, I've really seen both of these examples in the wild!). Take a look at what San Angelo, TX did.
San Angelo's regional economic development partners chose to a construct a new consolidated facility in a strategic central city location to help spur further downtown revitalization. And the added do good from this decision is the synergies gained by housing several cooperating organizations under a unmarried roof.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #half-dozen
Create a permanent public market.
Pike Place Market: Seattle, WA
Why?
The most successful downtown districts have many major functions (employment, residential, amusement, shopping, etc.). A key ingredient for creating a diverse downtown commune is to have major destinations that depict people to downtown for reasons other than employment. Many cities accept pursued professional sports teams for this reason, simply this arroyo only yields intermittent benefits, because major league stadiums/arenas lie vacant much of the year.
On the other manus, a large public market tin concenter thousands of downtown visitors on a daily footing. Seattle's Pike Place Marketplace is a dandy example of such a public marketplace. An estimated 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 almanac visits are made to the market.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #vii
Open a downtown satellite campus of a local university.
UTSA Downtown Campus: San Antonio, TX
Why?
Downtown campuses tin can be a win-win for universities and for a urban center's downtown. Major universities are often landlocked, and have problem meeting their needs for facility expansion. Opening a downtown satellite campus can be a great selection to expand the university'south reach. And the creation of a downtown academy campus tin can do wonders for a city's downtown.
The introduction of several grand college students to a downtown tin can provide a major boost to the diversity of a downtown district, especially if student housing is included as part of the expansion. Downtown Phoenix benefits immensely from Arizona State University's downtown campus. And the Academy of Texas-San Antonio downtown campus is a major asset for downtown San Antonio.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #8
Build a streetcar line connecting your downtown to an side by side urban neighborhood.
Portland Streetcar: Portland, OR
Why?
Calculation a streetcar line that connects your downtown to nearby urban neighborhoods will expand transportation options in your urban core, a good thing. But the biggest benefit from streetcars isn't transportation-related, information technology's an expanded potential for development. In fact, this is what streetcars were initially intended to practice. In the early 1900s, it was standard exercise for residential real estate developers to create streetcar lines that connected their land plots to the middle city and so that land values and evolution potential would increase on their holding.
Modern day streetcar lines testify the time-tested benefits of streetcars for urban revitalization. Portland and Seattle offer proficient examples of streetcar lines that have more than paid for themselves in the way of new existent estate development. In Portland'due south case, the new streetcar line led to $three.5 billion in new development inside two blocks of the streetcar line in only the first vii years afterwards the line opened.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #9
Create an awesome downtown playground to make your downtown more kid-friendly and family unit-friendly.
Imagination Playground: New York, NY
Why?
There is no question that downtowns across the U.S. are undergoing a major renaissance, especially in the way of new residential development. Just, this resurgence has been fueled about entirely by singles, young professionals, and empty nesters. Fifty-fifty the downtowns with the highest amounts of residential evolution in the last decade (Chicago, Seattle, Miami), struggle in their efforts to entreatment to families with children. Check out this Huffington Mail commodity which highlights the big-picture challenges associated with designing downtowns for families.
Many cities have high-quality downtown children'southward museums but very few have playgrounds of equal caliber. Creating a acme-notch downtown playground can be a truly transformative strategy, particularly if it'south function of a broader initiative to make your downtown more than family-friendly and kid-friendly, because and then few cities have an urban core that really appeals to families.
One example of a actually unique downtown playground is the Imagination Playground in NYC'southward Financial District. (Side note- The Imagination Playground was under structure when I lived in Lower Manhattan, simply at the time our son, Gavin, was a newborn. We moved to Austin when he was merely ii.v months old, right after the playground opened, simply on a visit to NYC back in 2012, Gavin – nearly 2 years old by that bespeak – spent a expert deal of fourth dimension at this playground, especially in the splash pad department.)
San Antonio is another city aiming to make its downtown much more kid-friendly. The metropolis is currently designing some major changes as part of the redevelopment of HemisFair Park (a big park named for the metropolis'due south 1968 globe fair). The redevelopment plans for HemisFair Park aim to reshape the park from a largely underutilized asset into a regional destination for families.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #10
Create a branded downtown entertainment district.
Bricktown: Oklahoma Urban center, OK
Why?
Downtowns that offer a new, heady commune – even if it'south just a small area of a couple of blocks – provide residents with a reason to check out what is going on in the center of their customs. A major upside of this strategy is that it can help to turn around the perceptions and reality of downtowns that have are not vibrant.
Perhaps the all-time case of this strategy is Oklahoma City's Bricktown, a big mixed-apply entertainment district that has transformed OKC's one-fourth dimension "expressionless-after-5pm" downtown into what is now hailed equally a 24/7 attraction. Bricktown, which makes upwardly the eastern section of downtown OKC, was filled with abandoned buildings as recently equally the 1990s. Today, cheers to major infusions of public and private investments, the district is dwelling to dozens of restaurants and bars, thousands of hotel rooms, and a growing number of residences.
Kansas City'due south Power & Light District is a similar success story (though on a smaller scale than Bricktown) of a new entertainment district that breathed fresh life into that city's downtown.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #11
Establish maximum parking standards for new downtown developments, or at to the lowest degree remove minimum parking requirements for new buildings.
SFpark variable rate parking pilot: San Francisco, CA
Why?
Unfortunately, the majority of U.Due south. cities impose parking minimums instead of parking maximums, even in their downtown districts. This means that real manor developers are forced to provide a minimum level of parking when building new downtown offices, hotels, or residential structures, ignoring the marketplace demand for parking. While these policies are generally intended to enhance or maintain access to downtown districts, they accept the unintended side event of fostering an over-dependence on motorcar travel while making downtown areas less walkable and less transit-supportive. Fortunately, there is a growing movement in large cities to abolish minimum parking requirements in downtowns.
Austin's city council recently enacted an ordinance that removes mandatory minimum parking in the central business commune.
And a few cities are really blazing a bold new path by not only removing parking minimums, just really going the extra step to establish maximum parking standards which place an upper limit on the amount of new parking spaces immune in downtown areas. You can read a fascinating account of the transformation of San Francisco'due south parking policies over the last few decades hither. In 1985, San Francisco first began experimenting with the removal of parking requirements for downtown commercial properties. Since then, San Francisco has increasingly adopted public policies that are aimed at reducing the corporeality of parking throughout the city, peculiarly in the downtown expanse.
A relatively new innovation out of San Francisco is the SFpark pilot program, which introduced demand-responsive variable parking meter pricing with existent-time data in multiple neighborhoods. A handful of other cities are experimenting with similar variable-charge per unit approaches to on-street parking, including New York with its PARK Smart pilot project.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #12
Set up up a downtown bike share program.
Divvy Bikes wheel share program: Chicago, IL
Why?
Any strategy that results in more transportation choices available within a downtown is a expert thing if you're aiming for a more vibrant urban core. And bike share programs – which have been spreading like wildfire across large U.South. cities in the past couple years – are certainly a good option for enhancing transportation access. But what makes this strategy then valuable is that it besides provides indirect marketing and branding service for your downtown.
Cycle share programs, with their highly visible stations and riders, broadcast a continual message to casual observers that downtown is a place for recreation and amusement. Divvy Bikes in Chicago and Citi Bike in New York are two of the largest and most successful bike share programs in the U.S.
Lastly, bike share programs are highly flexible in terms of how they can be implemented and managed. Some systems are managed by non-profits, others are owned by local transportation authorities, and many are sponsored by major corporations or wholly owned and operated by the private sector. This flexibility in ownership/management models can help explain why the bike share craze has spread so speedily in such a short fourth dimension.
Bottom Line
Absolutely, this is by no means a complete list…at that place are dozens, no hundreds, of unlike approaches to downtown revitalization. And you may have noticed that I chose to focus primarily on achievable strategies that are very much within the realm of the public sector. And so, what's the big takeaway?Whatever country your city's downtown is currently in, at that place are many actions that can be taken to heave the vitality of your customs's urban core.
What is your city doing to make its downtown more than vibrant?
John Karras believes that all communities take the potential to become more than vibrant. John'south professional person passions are aligned at the three-manner intersection of urban planning, economic development and transportation policy. John founded urbanSCALE.com to empower urban planning and economic evolution professionals with the cognition and tools needed to brand their communities more vibrant. John is also the creator of the urbanSCALE Rating Arrangement, the showtime comprehensive measure of how urban a metropolis is on a scale of one to ten.
Source: http://urbanscale.com/blog/12-strategies-will-transform-citys-downtown/
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