The Michigan Association of Planning (MAP) has several excellent educational opportunities coming up:

Transforming Transportation

November 4, 2009 (8:30 a.m. - 5:45 p.m.)
Lansing, MI - Radisson Hotel

6.5 or 8 AICP CM credits (pending approval)

MAP is bringing together state and national experts to showcase how successful communities link health, land use, and innovative transportation solutions, such as:

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The Zoning Guru follows a number of planning-related blogs across the U.S. One of my favorites is Urban Review STL, a blog authored by Steve Patterson that covers St. Louis, Missouri architecture, planning, design, and re-development topics.  Steve’s writing style is engaging, he has a photographer’s eye, and his posts often cover topics that apply equally well to other urban communities.

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The enclosed shopping mall, an uniquely American retail innovation, was the “future of retail” in the 1950s and 60s.  Shopping centers became an icon of suburban living in the 1970s and 80s, before beginning their slowly accelerating decline in the 1990s.  Today, the growing number of dead or dying shopping malls and centers are seen as symbols of the downside of “suburban sprawl.”

One example of this pattern is the Plaza Pasadena shopping center, an enclosed mall established originally as the cornerstone of an urban revitalization effort in Pasadena, California.  See “A Case Study in Successful Failure” for more on the birth, life, death, and future of this mall.

From a planning perspective, local communities can no longer assume that shopping centers will…
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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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