How one small town in South Carolina destroyed everything that makes downtown downtown.
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Placemaking is about making your city livelier and better connected. It’s also a powerful economic strategy. And right now is the time get serious about it.
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The four “gears” that drive a strong community in normal times are the same ones that will move towns and cities forward after the COVID-19 crisis.
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A walk down a thriving main street like this one will be a reminder why our downtowns are worth protecting and nurturing.
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Two small Tennessee towns reveal the mighty power of a traditional downtown square—even one that isn’t designed to achieve its full potential. It’s simply the most foolproof and financially productive style of development there is.
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In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Caroline Dobbins-Hurteau—staff member at Albion Reinvestment Corporation—about how you can start a successful pop-up shop, including how to pitch the idea to downtown organizations, how to find prospective tenants, and, most important, how to make it an incremental yet lasting success in your city or town.
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How one city made a grave mistake when it let itself be defined as a place people pass through, or one they leave every morning to go somewhere else. And how it could start to undo that mistake.
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The less you look like everyone else and the more you look like yourself, the better off you’ll be. This truth should be driving your town’s development. In fact, creating a distinctive sense of place is your competitive advantage.
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Typically, the thought of converting an old subway tunnel into parking would send shivers down the spines of urbanists. But this project may be a surprisingly beneficial way to catalyze redevelopment in Rochester, New York’s recovering downtown.
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Untapped, a six-week pop-up beer garden in the landmark Tennessee Brewery in downtown Memphis, might well have been a goodbye party for the long-neglected building. Instead, it caught a local developer’s interest and led to a second life for the historic structure.
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Small, scalable businesses are leading urban revitalizations across the country.
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After the crowds clear, what type of long-term impact does a public event leave in its wake?
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In Akron, Ohio, local leaders are taking steps to ensure that vacant spaces can be filled and new businesses can thrive.
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Disneyland may be a completely fake city but the lessons we can learn from it are very real.
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The more opportunities we can provide for residents to live in walkable areas with businesses and employment nearby, the more our cities can move toward financial resilience.
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It's amazing what we can do when we think small.
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We can all learn from these communities' attempts to turn their downtowns back into places for people, not just cars.
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If our historic downtowns had to follow present-day parking minimum laws, they would never be built.
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Our city is about to find out.
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Here are 3 reasons why our cities are desperately drawn to short-term megaprojects instead of small-scale improvements that will make our downtowns more successful in the long run.
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