Episode 6 of “Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know” is about downtowns, and it posts 5/18/2020 on our YouTube channel.
Have you ever stopped to think about which neighborhood is the most important one in your city?
The thing about a downtown is, it’s everybody’s. No matter where you live in a town, if your town’s downtown neighborhood is doing well you probably have a sense of shared ownership and pride in that place.
When a town grows to the size of several adjoining neighborhoods, it will start to need (and deserve) some things that most individual neighborhoods can’t support all by themselves, like a larger central gathering place, or a Main Street, and seats for the most important shared civic institutions, like City Hall. In healthy cities these are almost always found among workplaces and housing and lodging and places to shop and eat in the downtown neighborhood or center.
When they’re allowed to, downtowns naturally evolve to become mixed-use, mixed-income, multi-modal precincts. Jane Jacobs put it this way:
“The [downtown], and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.”
“The Need for Mixed Primary Uses,” from The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Variety, planned on purpose, like you mean it
The wide variety in neighborhoods and building types within the core of a traditional city ultimately provides opportunities for people of all ages, backgrounds, cultures and income levels to live and work together. In contrast to suburban development, which generally offers only the single-family detached home, traditional cities offer a range of housing options, including single-family homes on smaller lots, rowhouses, garden apartments, the loft conversions that are transforming many former industrial districts, and, in some cases, midrise and highrise options for the people Frank Lloyd Wright once called “cliff dwellers.” Each of these housing types is located within mixed-use blocks, allowing for residents to meet their daily needs and conveniences in a dynamic urban neighborhood. As centers of commerce and trade, downtowns also provide an incredible variety of employment opportunities. With a city’s commercial and residential life follows cultural facilities and retail establishments. Young professionals, CEOs, students, doctors, government officials, shopkeepers, retirees, and families alike can all find their place in the heart of the city, due to the incredible diversity of jobs, housing types, cultural amenities, and (hopefully) varied means of transportation. This incredible range of land uses, housing types, employment, and income levels within a traditional urban fabric provides the freedom of choice, a privilege not afforded to residents of mono-functional suburbs.
Renaissance underway (but there is a catch)
Downtowns, even the ones that fell into decline 40 or 50 years ago, are naturally set up to once again become places where people want to be. But they need tender loving care. You must not force suburban zoning or parking requirements or street designs on your downtown, and if that’s happened already, your city is not alone, but it can join the ranks of the cities that have begun reversing the process.
The good news is, Americans have rediscovered their downtowns, in small villages, medium-sized towns, and big cities. According to Walkable Urbanism author Christopher Leinberger, half our downtowns are already revitalizing, and the other half soon will be. Your downtown is the most important neighborhood in your city, shared by all. And that’s #6 on my list of the Town Planning Stuff Everyone Should Know.
For more information, subscribe to the Dover Kohl YouTube channel, and also read up on the Main Street program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. —Victor
P.S. Next week: Episode 7, Mixed Land Uses