Welcome!

Welcome to the companion website for Resilient Downtowns: A New Approach to Revitalizing Small- and Medium-City Downtowns.

Several years ago, I had an interesting discussion with the city manager of a medium-sized city in Wisconsin. The city had gained a reputation for the health of its downtown and so I was curious to know how it all got started. In our conversation it became clear to me that the downtown had not always been a priority for civic leaders in the city. In fact when the downtown began to decline, the city initially decided to turn its back on it. So, for several years, the downtown languished in decay as businesses fled to the fringe and few people visited or shopped there. However, the city needed to attract industry and a skilled workforce for its growing industries and corporations, many of which were now located in the outlying locations. To do so, the city needed to sell itself as a quality locale, especially to the executives of the corporations, but this was not easy. When an executive came for interview, city leaders would take them on a tour of the city’s suburban neighborhoods to tout the safety and quality of the community but rarely did these tours include the downtown.

In fact, tour guides were specifically instructed to avoid the downtown. But of course visitors wanted to see the whole city, not just part of it and some would invariably ask to be taken to the opera house and other civic amenities, many of which were located in the downtown. It finally dawned on the civic leaders that something had to be done about the downtown if they hoped to continue to grow the city’s economy. This is what led to a concerted effort by both the private and the public sectors to revitalize the downtowns. This story is perhaps applicable to many cities and how they began to recognize and link their downtowns to the economic health of the entire city.

For most civic leaders, the question is no longer whether the downtowns of their cities need to be revitalized, but how. It has become all too clear to these community leaders that a city cannot be healthy when its core neighborhood is neglected. As an integral part of the city, downtowns reflect on the entire community. When the downtown is healthy and vibrant, it sends a strong and positive message to visitors and investors that the city cares about its well-being. Alternatively, a derelict downtown conveys the opposite image. Yet, as cities seek ways to rejuvenate their downtowns, they find limited guidance on how to proceed.

To date, the only comprehensive guide to cities in revitalizing their downtowns is the four-point strategy of the National Main Street program. This approach has been standard practice for downtown revitalization for over three decades and by all accounts has been of resounding success. Because the National Main Street program was initiated as a response to competition from suburban malls, its focus was narrowly focused on revamping retail on Main Street in order to sharpen downtown’s competition with suburban merchants. The issues confronting downtowns are, however, broader and mutating. This requires that the Main Street approach rests solidly on a new platform that expands beyond the four-point approach.

This book provides a guide to communities in reviving their declining core areas, adopting a thematic approach to provide pointers for the successful revitalization of downtowns. Examples from fourteen small cities from across the United States are used to show how these strategies have been used to revitalize declining downtowns and how it can work for other cities as well.