[re-posted from March 18, 2009 - worth another read!]

What makes your downtown an indispensable place?

This is the essential question that should drive local economic development planning and project implementation in downtown areas:

• Potential residents ask this question when looking for “just the right home.”
• Potential business owners ask this question when looking for the perfect location for their new retail store, service business, office, or research and development center.
• Potential visitors ask this question while deciding where to go on Friday night.

Years ago, “downtown” served as the indispensable community and commercial hub for surrounding agricultural areas – the place to be for all ages.

Many small town centers provided a market for farm products, a source of products and services for farmers, and railroad access to other markets.

“County seats” and the downtown areas of larger cities served as the central gathering place for the surrounding region, complete with government offices, schools, and a variety of entertainment venues and “watering holes.”

Today, technology, transportation improvements, and market changes have vastly increased the available choices for people to spend their time and money.  Residents now commute to work and shopping across the metropolitan region.  Business is conducted on the Internet, and most historic downtowns have been relegated to a niche market.

We know what once made downtown indispensable, but that old model will not work today.  What we need to know is…

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[reposted from February 23, 2009 - well worth another read!]

How to revitalize a neighborhood?  By listening to its residents.

Community planners and planning consultants (like many “experts”) can easily fall into the trap of listening too little and talking too much.  Planning is not like medicine, and planners should beware not to find themselves in the position of saying, “I know what’s best for you, now take this medicine and you’ll be all better soon.”

The following tale is adapted and summarized from “Polishing Up the Diamond,” an excellent article from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business – Center for Social Innovation.  What it offers for professional planners is a reminder to avoid the ‘expert trap’ - often the most successful ideas for making a place better come from those that live and work there…

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To some in local government, the economic downturn and reduced tax revenues may raise the question of whether it’s worthwhile to fund local economic development initiatives.  The best answer is that providing for local economic development is an important way of ensuring that your community is friendly to businesses and can quickly respond on a local company’s behalf at critical times.

For example, Building Place recently read about a high technology company that experienced catastrophic damage to one of its clean rooms when the town’s water line burst.  The flood damage threatened the company’s ability to stay in operation, and therefore threatened job losses and reduced tax revenues for the town.  Fortunately, the local economic development office responded quickly and…

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Too often local elected and appointed officials feel overrun by the fast-moving flames of budgeting, personnel issues, and other public management challenges – to the point that they can do little more than react to the most urgent crisis confronting them.

Action on the “worthy” but not necessarily urgent things that need doing in a community (those that contribute most to achieving their community’s goals and priorities) get set aside or postponed for “another day.”

Economic development was one of those worthy but not urgent things a community needs to do, at least until Michigan’s current recession took hold.  For more officials, economic development has now also been added to “urgent” list, with good reason.

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