Lessons for Any Downtown

Abstract

Many 20th-century urban experts believed cities, and down-towns in particular, were obsolete. Their prescriptions for preventing them from withering away included redevelopment and reorganization in order to transform (presumably) obsolete downtowns into efficiently operating, modern districts; adding facilities designed to attract new customers whose spending would spill over into the rest of the city; or retrofitting the public realm to accommodate additional motor vehicles that would bring the goods, services, businesses, and people needed for continuing growth. However, each of these strategies was fundamentally flawed, because each one assumed that some particular end state would be the right means for achieving a properly functioning downtown.