#downtowns — Public Fediverse posts

Starting in the 1990s, cities developed a playbook for revitalizing #downtowns. Downtowns change over time and face new challenges, but it’s surprising how much of the old playbook still works. What do we need now? A playbook for #neighborhoods so they can become mixed-income, mixed-use places. https://www.governing.com/urban/can-pittsburgh-pull-off-another-renaissance

In the past 50 years, cities have made progress toward revitalizing #downtowns and reclaiming #neighborhoods. Now, they are learning to share streets with cyclists and pedestrians. What other positive big trend have we seen since the 1970s? In city after city, it’s the rediscovery of urban waterfronts … as in D.C. https://ggwash.org/view/104239/how-dc-is-reclaiming-its-waterfront-identity

Book of the Week: “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World” is one of those books that makes the obvious apparent. The obvious thing: In the past century, cars with their insatiable appetite for #parking have changed our #downtowns, #neighborhoods and #suburbs in many bad ways. The book offers ways of ending the plague of parking. https://www.atlantaurbanist.com/book/paved-paradise/

How downtown Nashville doubled its population: Crises create change by changing expectations. This explains the neighborhoods that have seen the greatest increases in #housing over the last five years. Half of them are traditional #downtowns that became mixed-use places once office buildings lost their value. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/which-neighborhoods-have-added-most-housing-units-past-five-years #CRE

When the “15-Minute City” idea appeared during Covid, it seemed impossible. Change all our #neighborhoods so everything we need for daily life is a short walk, bike ride or transit trip away? Unlikely. But there is a place in your city where we COULD see this vision coming to life in the years ahead. It’s downtown. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/06/17/staggered-by-covid-st-paul-bets-big-on-creating-a-new-downtown #downtowns

People who care about cities have a villain: work from home, which has reduced transit use and emptied #downtowns. But what if #WFH were seen as a gift, a way of turning residential-only #neighborhoods into mixed-use places? It might cause us to be especially enthusiastic about home-based businesses and ask … what can we do to encourage them? https://www.governing.com/policy/why-do-we-make-it-so-hard-for-home-based-businesses

Urbanists pay a lot of attention to big cities. Why? Because we’re familiar with them, thanks to our travels. But what about midsize cities? What are their challenges? How are their challenges different from those of big cities? A think tank finds one intriguing difference: #Downtowns matter more in midsize cities than in big cities. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/small-and-midsized-downtown-recovery-overcoming-obstacles-and-uplifting-innovative-solutions-in-four-regions/

In MA, “gateway cities” are midsize cities in some type of distress, usually because of economic changes. State gov’t is getting serious about helping these struggling regional hubs, starting with their #downtowns. So what can a state gov’t do? It could help the cities that are ready for change with planning and organization. https://commonwealthbeacon.org/gateway-cities/couldnt-come-at-a-better-time-six-gateway-cities-to-get-economic-boost-in-downtown-districts/

Philly’s Avenue of the Arts is called that because it connects so many performing-arts venues. It’s also a somewhat forbidding walk. There are plans to make it more inviting, with trees, wider sidewalks and outdoor dining. The inspiration: an improvement plan that enlivened an even better-known street, Paris’ Champs-Élysées. https://whyy.org/articles/avenue-of-the-arts-philadelphia-upgrades/ #downtowns

Let’s walk to the game! Atlanta is very good at building huge single-use places like its airport and sprawling residential suburbs. Or its giant downtown convention district that also hosts basketball and football #stadiums. Except there, it may soon try its hand at mixing in new uses, with housing and retail at the edge of its #NFL stadium. https://www.ajc.com/business/2026/01/new-housing-and-retail-could-rise-next-to-mercedes-benz-stadium/ #downtowns #CRE

You can probably come up with many examples of how theories shape action. A sports team needs a theory of how it can win. A young person needs a theory of success. Who else needs a theory? Landlords in #downtowns where empty storefronts are suddenly a big problem. A nonprofit offers a theory of leasing. https://www.spur.org/news/2025-12-16/how-san-jose-can-fill-its-vacant-ground-floor-office-spaces-speed-economic-recovery #CRE

Book of the Week: “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World” is one of those books that makes the obvious apparent. The obvious thing: In the past century, cars with their insatiable appetite for #parking have changed our #downtowns, #neighborhoods and #suburbs in many bad ways. The book offers ways of ending the plague of parking. https://www.atlantaurbanist.com/book/paved-paradise/

Step 1 in a turnaround is understanding strengths and weaknesses. Then you build on strengths as you reduce weaknesses. Downtown Denver needs a turnaround, and one company’s CEO who is investing there points out a strength. The journey to work, he tells employees, involves an affordable #transit ride and a four-minute walk. https://denverite.com/2025/11/24/ibotta-downtown-denver-office-moved-in/ #downtowns #walkable

Denver is wrestling with how to turn around a downtown plagued by building vacancies and empty streets. Latest idea to bubble up: Make it “the nation’s largest signature ‘play’ district.” Think N.O.’s French Quarter, minus the booze. Prediction: It won’t work. Why? Because it doesn’t build from downtown’s strengths. https://denverite.com/2025/11/18/city-council-downtown-denver-area-plan/ #downtowns

The story of downtown shopping malls teaches us something about turnarounds in general. In the 1980s and 1990s, cities tried pumping life into ailing #downtowns by mimicking what had worked in suburbs. Today, these are almost uniformly dead places. What should cities have done? Focus not on liabilities but on downtown strengths, like walkability and transit. https://denverite.com/2025/10/24/city-buying-denver-pavilions-explained/

With Roles as Civic Hubs, Libraries Turn Over a New Page www.bloomberg.com/news/features/… #libraries #hubs #downtowns

Since the 1950s groups have tried to save #downtowns, as they lost stores and offices. In the 1980s, there was great enthusiasm about “festival marketplaces,” shopping-mall style developments, often near waterfronts. The model was Harborplace in Baltimore. Update: Baltimore is slowly reviving. Harborplace played little role in this. In fact, it’s the one in big trouble today. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/business/baltimore-inner-harbor-downtown-redevelopment.html

Philly’s Ben Franklin Parkway was envisioned a little more than a century ago as a grand Paris-style boulevard dotted with green spaces and cultural institutions. Alas, it has become a highway with some roundabouts … and a nightmare for pedestrians. Can this parkway be saved? Not easily, not quickly … but, yes, some say, it can. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2025/09/26/benjamin-franklin-parkway-redesign/ #downtowns #walkable

Philly has a common problem, a downtown department store that sits vacant. But not just any store. This is the Wannamaker store, with its soaring Grand Court and majestic organ that entertained holiday shoppers for generations. There is still no permanent use for this building, but a fundraising effort will preserve holiday traditions and add one … opera performances. https://whyy.org/articles/opera-philadelphia-wanamaker-organ/ #downtowns

What is the greatest downtown turnaround story in the U.S. today? Surprising answer: Detroit. One way to know is to look at where cities still trying to turn around their downtowns go for lessons. Increasingly, it’s to Detroit. What do they learn there? Here are seven things. https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2025/07/seven-ideas-for-downtown-st-paul-from-a-revitalized-detroit/ #downtowns

Are you worried that #downtowns will so empty out of office workers and retail that they’ll go extinct? If so, a longtime urban observer is here to assure you that they won’t. They’ll adapt but not disappear. To explain, he takes you on a tour of cities and their downtowns, starting in … well, the Middle Ages. https://www.governing.com/magazine/despite-downtown-problems-cities-will-endure

An AI company, launched just before the pandemic, went totally WFH. And it worked. EvenUp grew from 100 employees to 500 and is now a billion-dollar company. So why is this fast-growing tech company opening a 10,000-sq-ft office in downtown S.F.? Because it needs even faster innovation and believes face-to-face is the way to get it. https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/tech-office-space-20766040.php #CRE #downtowns

It’s easy to think that some damage done to cities is irreversible … like the highways that divided #downtowns from their waterfronts or plowed through #neighborhoods. But are these mistakes truly irreversible? An effort to cap a freeway in Philly suggests some problems aren’t unsolvable. They just haven’t been solved yet. https://whyy.org/articles/penns-landing-park-interstate-95-philadelphia-nearing-completion-what-to-know/

Book of the Week: “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World” is one of those books that makes the obvious apparent. The obvious thing: In the past century, cars with their insatiable appetite for #parking have changed our #downtowns, #neighborhoods and #suburbs in many bad ways. The book offers ways of ending the plague of parking. https://www.atlantaurbanist.com/book/paved-paradise/

The 16th St Mall is a pedestrian space and busway that ought to be Denver’s Times Sq … but isn’t. So what to do with this vital, troubled public space? Downtown interests are trying events, signage and a name change. Here’s a vision: Make 16th St worth walking, with things to see and do along the way and a safe, comfortable walk between. https://denverite.com/2025/05/20/16th-street-mall-new-name-denver/ #walkable #downtowns

There are many things your city council could work on that would make your city better for citizens and visitors. But as politicians go about creating big things, don’t let them overlook smaller amenities … like public restrooms. Want to challenge them? Point out that the NYC Council recently passed a “bathroom bill.” Why not your council? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/nyregion/nyc-bill-public-bathrooms.html #downtowns #QOL

“Excited to be back on the street level”: In the late 1980s, developers in S.F. opened what looked like a winning project … a nine-story shopping mall on Market St. Fast forward to 2025, and the mall is on its last legs. So where are its tenant stores going? One is returning to the place it began, a traditional shopping district called Union Sq, not far away. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/s-f-downtown-mall-s-loss-goes-to-union-square-20267899.php #retail #downtowns #CRE

#Downtowns are complex environments that get better over time when people, places, infrastructure, events, safety and businesses reinforce one another … or grow worse when these same elements work against one other. S.F.’s downtown is in a “catch-22” moment, where improvements have slowed the decline but not yet reversed it. So … which way will downtown go now? https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/emilyhoeven/article/san-francisco-downtown-union-square-20185733.php

Biggest problem of most #downtowns: too many empty offices. Biggest problem in Savannah GA’s downtown: too few. The office vacancy rate there is 2.1% (Atlanta’s is 16.6%.) Why so little space? The city’s historic office buildings are being converted to hotels catering to the city’s booming tourist industry. Among those begging for this to stop are tourism leaders. Cities, they argue, need offices. https://www.ajc.com/news/business/empty-offices-not-in-savannah-and-the-space-crush-is-worsening/6OWTEW5D4BFU3OA2LFRBGTB2ZY/ #CRE