12 Strategies That Will Transform Your

City’s Downtown
Below are 12 strategies that can transform your city’s downtown into a thriving urban
district. For each strategy, you’ll see a concise explanation of how the strategy will make
your downtown more vibrant and one or two examples of cities that have successfully
implemented the strategy.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #1

Turn one-way streets into two-way streets.

King Street: Charleston, SC

Why?

One-way streets are great if your only goal is to channel traffic through your
downtown, but they are bad for pedestrian activity and retail opportunities. Two-way
streets create a more comfortable pedestrian environment and have been
shown to increase property values.

There is a good reason that the Main Streets that sit at the urban core of small towns
and cities across the U.S. are almost always 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 with showcasing downtown merchants,
music, and food.

Union Square Farmers Market: New York, NY

Why?

Ongoing public events help drive positive awareness of your city’s

downtown. Bringing people from your entire city downtown on a regular basis, once
a week or even just once a month, serves to make citizens aware of the unique
amenities that exist in the central part of their community.

Events like a weekly farmers market (like the Union Square Farmers Market in NYC)
or a monthly art walk (many cities have a “First Friday Art Walk” like the one in
Denver) can draw thousands of people to your downtown on a regular basis. And
many of these people do not live or work near downtown, so by creating the event,
you can expose a wider portion of your community to the unique assets
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 downtown. An added benefit of
these types of events is that they engage local merchants, artists, and
entrepreneurs, helping to make these businesspeople champions for downtown
revitalization.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #3
Create more land for development (landfill into a body of water, remove land
from a floodplain, take back land from a freeway, etc).

Battery Park City: New York, NY

Why?

If you could literally expand your city’s downtown by creating more land area for
new downtown development, you would jump at the opportunity, right?

Well, if your city is one of the lucky ones that sits next to an ocean, you might be able
to use landfill to expand the land area of your downtown, as New York City did with
its Battery Park City neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. In fact, Battery Park City
was built on 90 acres of landfill created from more than 1.2 million cubic yards earth
that was excavated from the original World Trade Center site.

But this isn’t the only way to create more land for development. How about that
floodplain land in your downtown? You could make some infrastructure investments
that take some of that land out of the floodplain, opening up more acreage for
downtown development. That’s what Austin is doing with its Waller Creek project, a
major initiative that will rejuvenate the currently underutilized waterway that runs
through the eastern section of the city’s downtown.
Or what about that massive freeway that runs along the edge of your
downtown? You could tear it down and build a park in its place like Portland did in
its downtown.

Or you could sink it and cover it with a park like Dallas did.

Or you could sink it and cover it with a park and a convention center like Seattle.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #4

Make under-utilized public land available for private sector development

Seaholm Power Plant Redevelopment: Austin, TX

Why?

All types of government (federal, state, and local) own real estate
assets. Sometimes these “assets” are not doing any good for the government entity
that owns them or for the community they sit in. Structures like vacant government
office buildings, abandoned power plants, and otherobsolete public facilities in
your city’s downtown are often prime candidates for redevelopment by the
private sector.

Check out how Austin is using its defunct Seaholm power plant as the centerpiece of
a new mixed-use downtown development.
Or, take a look at what the private sector has done with a former elementary school
in Portland, turning it into a hotel/microbrewery (this one is not 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?

It may seem like an inconsequential decision but the location of government offices
and community-serving organizations matters. This is even more important for
organizations that interact with the outside business world like chambers of
commerce and economic development organizations. Of course, public decisions to
place jobs downtown are beneficial, but in this case,we’re talking about the image
that is portrayed to the outside world.

What type of message do you think it sends when a city’s economic development
corporation is located in a big-box strip center, or when the local chamber of
commerce is housed in the upstairs of a convenience store? (Yes, I’ve actually 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 benefit from this decision is the synergies gained by
housing several cooperating organizations under a single roof.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #6

Create a permanent public market.

Pike Place Market: Seattle, WA

Why?

The most successful downtown districts have many major functions (employment,
residential, entertainment, shopping, etc.). A key ingredient for creating a diverse
downtown district is to have major destinations that draw people to downtown for
reasons other than employment. Many cities have pursued professional sports
teams for this reason, but this approach only yields intermittent benefits, because
major league stadiums/arenas lie vacant much of the year.

On the other hand, a large public market can attract thousands of downtown
visitors on a daily basis. Seattle’s Pike Place Market is a great example of such a
public market. An estimated 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 annual visits are made to the
market.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #7
Open a downtown satellite campus of a local university.

UTSA Downtown Campus: San Antonio, TX

Why?

Downtown campuses can be a win-win for universities and for a city’s

downtown. Major universities are often landlocked, and have trouble meeting their
needs for facility expansion. Opening a downtown satellite campus can be a great
option to expand the university’s reach. And the creation of a downtown university
campus can do wonders for a city’s downtown.

The introduction of several thousand college students to a downtown 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 University 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 adjacent urban neighborhood.

Portland Streetcar: Portland, OR

Why?

Adding 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, it’s an expanded potential for
development. In fact, this is what streetcars were initially intended to do. In the early
1900s, it was standard practice for residential real estate developers to create
streetcar lines that connected their land plots to the center city so that land values
and development potential would increase on their property.

Modern day streetcar lines prove the time-tested benefits of streetcars for
urban revitalization. Portland and Seattle offer good examples of streetcar lines
that have more than paid for themselves in the way of new real estate
development. In Portland’s case, the new streetcar line led to $3.5 billion in new
development within 2 blocks of the streetcar line in only the first 7 years after the line
opened.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #9
Create an awesome downtown playground to make your downtown more kid-friendly
and family-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. But, this
resurgence has been fueled almost entirely by singles, young professionals, and
empty nesters. Even the downtowns with the highest amounts of residential
development in the last decade (Chicago, Seattle, Miami), struggle in their efforts to
appeal to families with children. Check out this Huffington Post article which
highlights the big-picture challenges associated with designing downtowns for
families.

Many cities have high-quality downtown children’s museums but very few have
playgrounds of equal caliber. Creating a top-notch downtown playground can be a
truly transformative strategy, particularly if it’s part of a broader initiative to make
your downtown more family-friendly and kid-friendly, because so few cities have an
urban core that really appeals to families.
One example of a really unique downtown playground is the Imagination
Playground in NYC’s Financial District. (Side note- The Imagination Playground was
under construction when I lived in Lower Manhattan, but at the time our son, Gavin,
was a newborn. We moved to Austin when he was only 2.5 months old, right after
the playground opened, but on a visit to NYC back in 2012, Gavin – nearly 2 years
old by that point – spent a good deal of time at this playground, especially in the
splash pad section.)

San Antonio is another city aiming to make its downtown much more kid-
friendly. The city is currently designing some major changes as part of the
redevelopment of HemisFair Park (a large park named for the city’s 1968 world
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 City, OK

Why?

Downtowns that offer a new, exciting district – even if it’s 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 community. 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 best example of this strategy is Oklahoma City’s Bricktown, a large
mixed-use entertainment district that has transformed OKC’s one-time “dead-after-
5pm” downtown into what is now hailed as a 24/7 attraction. Bricktown, which
makes up the eastern section of downtown OKC, was filled with abandoned
buildings as recently as the 1990s. Today, thanks to major infusions of public and
private investments, the district is home to dozens of restaurants and bars,
thousands of hotel rooms, and a growing number of residences.

Kansas City’s 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 least
remove minimum parking requirements for new buildings.

SFpark variable rate parking pilot: San Francisco, CA

Why?

Unfortunately, the majority of U.S. cities impose parking minimums instead of

parking maximums, even in their downtown districts. This means that real estate
developers are forced to provide a minimum level of parking when building new
downtown offices, hotels, or residential structures, ignoring the market demand for
parking. While these policies are generally intended to enhance or maintain access
to downtown districts, they have the unintended side effect of fostering an over-
dependence on auto 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 district.

And a few cities are really blazing a bold new path by not only removing parking
minimums, but actually going the extra step to establish maximum parking
standards which place an upper limit on the amount of new parking spaces
allowed in downtown areas. You can read a fascinating account of the
transformation of San Francisco’s parking policies over the last few
decades here. 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
amount of parking throughout the city, especially in the downtown area.

A relatively new innovation out of San Francisco is the SFpark pilot program, which
introduced demand-responsive variable parking meter pricing with real-time
information in multiple neighborhoods. A handful of other cities are experimenting
with similar variable-rate approaches to on-street parking, including New York with
its PARK Smart pilot project.
Vibrant Downtown Strategy #12
Set up a downtown bike share program.

Divvy Bikes bike share program: Chicago, IL

Why?

Any strategy that results in more transportation choices available within a downtown
is a good thing if you’re aiming for a more vibrant urban core. And bike share
programs – which have been spreading like wildfire across large U.S. cities in the
past couple years – are certainly a good option for enhancing transportation
access. But what makes this strategy so valuable is that it also
provides indirect marketing and branding service for your downtown.

Bike share programs, with their highly visible stations and riders, broadcast a
continual message to casual observers that downtown is a place for recreation and
entertainment. 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 quickly in such a short time.
Bottom Line

Admittedly, this is by no means a complete list…there are dozens, no hundreds, of

different 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. So, what’s the big takeaway? Whatever state your city’s
downtown is currently in, there are many actions that can be taken to boost
the vitality of your community’s urban core.

What is your city doing to make its downtown more vibrant?