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 Back to Solutions: Concentrating Growth and Development
Strengthening Downtowns and Town & Village Centers
Strong downtowns and town & village centers are a critical part of fighting sprawl. In fact, many recent state initiatives have linked growth management strategies with incentives to encourage more development downtown. Some data indicates the beginnings of a reversal of the decades long decline in downtown vitality.
 Downtown farmers or green markets have flourished in towns and cities across the country. Now numbering more than 2,400 nationwide, local farmers' markets provide one of the best ways of increasing downtown activity, while offering a valuable outlet for area farmers and high quality food to community residents. Here are scenes from one typical farmers market, held on Saturdays in downtown Burlington, Vermont, next to City Hall.
-- Author and lecturer Roberta Brandes Gratz in To Market, To Market (Planning Comm'rs Journal, Spring 2001) takes a closer look at the role farmers' markets can play -- and why they've become so popular. To read excerpts; article can also be ordered & downloaded online.
-- for more on farmers markets nationwide click on the photos above.
-- perhaps the best know public market in the U.S. is Seattle's Pike Place Market.
-- also visit the Public Market Collaborative.
Many non-profit organizations have focused on making downtowns more attractive and "liveable". One of the leaders in this area is the Project for Public Spaces. Their web site contains information on a variety of programs designed to strengthen downtowns.
The National Main Street Center web site provides information on local efforts across the country to revitalize downtowns.
In Smart Growth Trends, an article in the Winter 1999 Planning Commissioners Journal (available for free downloading as a pdf file), Edward McMahon considers the growth in downtown housing one of five important "smart growth trends." As McMahon notes, "many smaller cities and towns are also seeing a growing market for downtown housing." Why this new trend? According to McMahon, among the reasons: many downtowns are still walkable, so people can walk to work instead of needing to battle congested roads; downtowns offer many amenities not typically found in suburban neighborhoods; and changing demographics mean a growing segment of the population is interested in downtown living.
| Data supporting this trend can be found in a report titled The Rise of Liiving Downtowns (in pdf format from The Brookings Institution web site) prepared by The Brookings Institution and The Fannie Mae Foundation. One of the most prominent examples is downtown Denver, Colorado. Jennifer Moulton, Director of the City-County Community Planning & Development Agency looks at what's worked for Denver in 10 Steps to a Living Downtown (in pdf format, also from The Brookings Institution web site).
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Jack McCall, author of The Small Town Survival Guide, prepared a series of columns for the Planning Commissioners Journal on ways of strengthening small towns. His column, "Up With Downtown", focused on the importance of downtown to small towns. Read excerpts; article can be ordered & downloaded online.
Efforts to strengthen downtowns are challenged by continuing superstore sprawl. For more on how superstores have mushroomed in one small suburb in Vermont, see A Digression from the Editor -- some resources for dealing with superstores are also listed there.
"Center-ing Our Suburbs," an article by Richard Untermann that ran in the Planning Commissioners Journal looks at ways of developing walkable, mixed use suburban centers, and retroffiting outdated shopping areas. To read excerpts; article can also be ordered & downloaded online.
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