What Is The Size Of Successful Urban Pedestrian Plazas In Europe Or Scandinavia

Does your city accept a long-range downtown plan?

Does your metropolis have a downtown development corporation, a downtown brotherhood, or similar non-turn a profit organization that is focused solely on promoting downtown as a destination for businesses, residents, and development?

Does your metropolis have public policies (similar revenue enhancement abatements, grants, and other special incentives) to promote downtown development?

Hopefully, you answered 'yes' to the questions above. But even if y'all answered 'no' to each question, and your city doesn't have any official program in place to help brand your downtown a more vibrant urban place, in that location are still lots of strategies your community can pursue to improve the urban vitality of your downtown. That's what this post is all near.

Below are 12 strategies that can transform your urban center's downtown into a thriving urban district. For each strategy, you'll run into a concise explanation of how the strategy will make your downtown more vibrant and one or 2 examples of cities that have successfully implemented the strategy.

By the way, if you're interested in reading more about the importance of downtown to your urban center, delight see my 3-part blog series on The Most Prosperous Downtowns of the 21^st Century where I analyzed how the downtown areas of the 100 largest cities have fared over the past decade.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #1

Turn one-way streets into two-way streets.

Male monarch Street: Charleston, SC

Why?

One-way streets are great if your only goal is to channel traffic through your downtown, simply they are bad for pedestrian activeness and retail opportunities. 2-mode streets create a more comfortable pedestrian environment and have been shown to increment belongings values.

There is a good reason that the Principal Streets that sit at the urban core of small towns and cities across the U.Southward. are almost always ii-way streets. From Wichita, KS to Charleston, SC, cities beyond the U.Southward. are realizing the benefits of two-mode streets in their urban cores.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #2

Establish a regularly occurring public event that showcases downtown merchants, music, and nutrient.

Union Foursquare Farmers Marketplace: New York, NY

Why?

Ongoing public events assistance bulldoze positive awareness of your urban center's downtown. Bringing people from your entire city downtown on a regular basis, once a week or fifty-fifty just one time a month, serves to make citizens aware of the unique amenities that be in the fundamental role of their community.

Events like a weekly farmers market (like the Union Square Farmers Marketplace in NYC) or a monthly art walk (many cities have a "First Friday Art Walk" like the one in Denver) tin can draw thousands of people to your downtown on a regular footing. And many of these people do not live or work nigh downtown, then past creating the event, yous 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 do good 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 aggrandize your city's downtown by creating more land expanse for new downtown development, y'all would jump at the opportunity, right?

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

But this isn't the but mode to create more than land for evolution. How near that floodplain state in your downtown? You could brand some infrastructure investments that take some of that land out of the floodplain, opening upwardly more acreage for downtown development. That's what Austin is doing with its Waller Creek projection, a major initiative that volition 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? Y'all could tear it downwards and build a park in its place like Portland did in its downtown.

Or yous could sink it and encompass it with a park like Dallas did.

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

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #4

Make under-utilized public land available for private sector development

Seaholm Power Constitute Redevelopment: Austin, TX

Why?

All types of government (federal, state, and local) own real manor assets. Sometimes these "avails" are non doing whatever good for the government entity that owns them or for the customs they sit in. Structures like vacant authorities office buildings, abandoned ability plants, and other obsolete public facilities in your city's downtown are ofttimes prime candidates for redevelopment by the individual sector.

Check out how Austin is using its defunct Seaholm power plant as the centerpiece of a new mixed-apply downtown evolution.

Or, take a look at what the individual sector has washed with a former elementary school in Portland, turning information technology into a hotel/microbrewery (this 1 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 unmarried downtown location.

Business Resource Middle: San Angelo, TX

Why?

It may seem like an inconsequential determination but the location of regime 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 form, public decisions to identify jobs downtown are benign, only in this case, nosotros're talking about the image that is portrayed to the exterior globe.

What type of message exercise y'all think it sends when a city'due south economical evolution corporation is located in a large-box strip heart, or when the local chamber of commerce is housed in the upstairs of a convenience store? (Yes, I've really seen both of these examples in the wild!). Have a expect at what San Angelo, TX did.

San Angelo'south regional economic development partners chose to a construct a new consolidated facility in a strategic central city location to assist spur further downtown revitalization. And the added benefit from this decision is the synergies gained past housing several cooperating organizations nether a unmarried roof.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #6

Create a permanent public market.

Freeway Place Market: Seattle, WA

Why?

The most successful downtown districts accept many major functions (employment, residential, amusement, shopping, etc.). A central ingredient for creating a diverse downtown district is to have major destinations that depict 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 prevarication vacant much of the twelvemonth.

On the other hand, a large public market place tin 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 almanac visits are made to the market.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #7

Open a downtown satellite campus of a local academy.

UTSA Downtown Campus: San Antonio, TX

Why?

Downtown campuses tin can be a win-win for universities and for a city'due south downtown. Major universities are often landlocked, and have trouble meeting their needs for facility expansion. Opening a downtown satellite campus can be a great pick to expand the university's reach. And the creation of a downtown university campus tin do wonders for a city's downtown.

The introduction of several one thousand college students to a downtown can provide a major boost to the diversity of a downtown commune, specially 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 do good 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 continued their land plots to the heart city and then that country values and evolution potential would increase on their property.

Modern 24-hour interval streetcar lines show the fourth dimension-tested benefits of streetcars for urban revitalization. Portland and Seattle offer good examples of streetcar lines that take more than paid for themselves in the fashion of new real estate development. In Portland'south case, the new streetcar line led to $3.5 billion in new development inside 2 blocks of the streetcar line in only the get-go vii 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?

At that place is no question that downtowns beyond the U.South. are undergoing a major renaissance, particularly in the fashion of new residential development. But, this resurgence has been fueled about entirely by singles, immature 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 entreatment to families with children. Check out this Huffington Post article which highlights the big-motion picture challenges associated with designing downtowns for families.

Many cities have loftier-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 function of a broader initiative to make your downtown more family-friendly and kid-friendly, because so few cities accept an urban core that really appeals to families.

Ane example of a really unique downtown playground is the Imagination Playground in NYC'southward Financial District. (Side note- The Imagination Playground was under construction when I lived in Lower Manhattan, only at the fourth dimension our son, Gavin, was a newborn. We moved to Austin when he was just ii.5 months old, right after the playground opened, simply on a visit to NYC back in 2012, Gavin – nearly 2 years old past that signal – spent a good deal of time at this playground, particularly in the splash pad department.)

San Antonio is another metropolis 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 urban center'south 1968 globe off-white). 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 commune.

Bricktown: Oklahoma Urban center, OK

Why?

Downtowns that offer a new, exciting commune – even if it's but a small expanse 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 assistance to turn effectually the perceptions and reality of downtowns that have are not vibrant.

Perhaps the best example of this strategy is Oklahoma City'due south Bricktown, a large mixed-use amusement district that has transformed OKC's one-fourth dimension "expressionless-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 every bit recently as the 1990s. Today, thanks to major infusions of public and private investments, the commune is home to dozens of restaurants and bars, thousands of hotel rooms, and a growing number of residences.

Kansas Metropolis'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 urban center's downtown.

Vibrant Downtown Strategy #xi

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.Southward. 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 edifice new downtown offices, hotels, or residential structures, ignoring the market demand for parking. While these policies are by and large intended to enhance or maintain access to downtown districts, they have the unintended side event of fostering an over-dependence on machine 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'southward metropolis council recently enacted an ordinance that removes mandatory minimum parking in the central business concern commune.

And a few cities are really blazing a bold new path past not only removing parking minimums, only actually going the extra step to establish maximum parking standards which identify an upper limit on the corporeality of new parking spaces allowed in downtown areas. You can read a fascinating account of the transformation of San Francisco'southward parking policies over the final few decades here. In 1985, San Francisco offset 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, particularly in the downtown surface area.

A relatively new innovation out of San Francisco is the SFpark airplane pilot program, which introduced demand-responsive variable parking meter pricing with real-fourth dimension 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

Fix a downtown bike share program.

Divvy Bikes cycle share programme: Chicago, IL

Why?

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

Bike share programs, with their highly visible stations and riders, broadcast a continual bulletin to coincidental 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 wheel share programs in the U.S.

Lastly, bike share programs are highly flexible in terms of how they tin can be implemented and managed. Some systems are managed past non-profits, others are owned by local transportation government, and many are sponsored past major corporations or wholly owned and operated past the individual sector. This flexibility in ownership/direction models can help explain why the bike share craze has spread so quickly in such a brusk time.

Lesser Line

Absolutely, 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 doable strategies that are very much within the realm of the public sector. So, what'due south the large takeaway?Whatever country your city'due south downtown is currently in, at that place are many actions that can be taken to heave the vitality of your community's urban cadre.

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

John Karras believes that all communities have the potential to go more vibrant. John'south professional person passions are aligned at the three-style intersection of urban planning, economic evolution and transportation policy. John founded urbanSCALE.com to empower urban planning and economic development professionals with the knowledge and tools needed to brand their communities more vibrant. John is also the creator of the urbanSCALE Rating System, the first comprehensive measure out of how urban a urban center is on a scale of i to 10.