Downtown America

[airindia787]

Hi everyone!

This is my very first post on this site, so please be patient.
I would like to know more about the history of a downtown and whether they are being "killed" as more and more people move to the suburbs. Any details are appreciated!

palemonk

[waterloowarrior]

These are a few suggestions that aren't necessarily American-based but can give you a good idea on North American and worldwide trends


Anything by Jane Jacobs

towards a general urban theory (http://urban.nyu.edu/courses/p112660/hall.pdf) - Peter Hall (brilliant geographer) - about recent trends affecting cities
also check out "Global city-regionsin the twenty-first century" by Hall


'Downtown redevelopment strategies in the United States: An end-of-the-century assessment' by Kent Robertson

excerpt

Looking toward the 21st century, downtowns should work towards stronger identities; each city should identify the uniqueness of its downtown. I offer several recommendations:

1. Maintain high density levels. Compactness keeps downtowns walkable and destinations accessible.
2. Emphasize historic preservation. Nothing distinguishes downtown from the surrounding suburbs more than preserving the structures that establish its unique identity. Be creative and economical with adaptive reuse.
3. Do not "suburbanize" downtown. A downtown that permits new building designs to resemble suburban structures (blank walls, large setbacks, front parking lots) will lose its identity, yet still find it difficult to compete with suburbia.
4. Maintain and/or develop true civic public spaces, which are important to a community's identity and cannot be replicated in private indoor malls.
5. Develop and enforce strict design controls on new development, to ensure that the project integrates effectively with the downtown. In many cases, a poorly designed or badly planned development may prove worse than no development at all.
6. Do not underestimate the importance of street-level activity. Too much indoor orientation (shopping centers, skywalks) removes pedestrians and eventually business from the street, thereby draining the vitality from the image of downtown.
7. Plan for a multi-functional downtown. Successful downtowns give a wide range of people a stake in downtown, by offering housing, work, shopping, culture, entertainment, government, and tourist attractions.

edit: sorry those references probably weren't exactly what you were looking for; there are probably better examples of books that talk more about the history of downtowns and less about urban geography theory ;)

[MayorOfChicago]

I live near and deal with downtown Chicago every day. I would certainly say it's more alive today than it was 6 years ago when I moved here. So no, in my experience I don't think downtowns are all being "killed".

[airindia787]

Thanks for the information everyone. While I know that cities such as New York or Chicago are not losing their downtowns to suburbia, I read in The Economist that other, smaller cities have been trying to give their downtowns a major makeover with little success. Anyone who can verify this?

[Attrill]

I think they were collapsing in the late 70's and early 80's, but started to come back in the 90's and are continuing to improve. Downtowns making a comeback is very common today.

Chicago's downtown has changed drastically in the 14 years I've been here (all for the better) and many other cities have been experiencing the same thing over the last 5-10 years. I have friends in Louisville, Lexington, Providence, Indianapolis and other cities who have seen the same thing happen where they live. Smaller cities that are/were dependent on one industry have a much more difficult time bringing their downtowns back.

[BigKidD]

Thanks for the information everyone. While I know that cities such as New York or Chicago are not losing their downtowns to suburbia, I read in The Economist that other, smaller cities have been trying to give their downtowns a major makeover with little success. Anyone who can verify this?
The article that referenced San Jose and Las Vegas(I believe), or a different article entirely?

[shovel_ready]

^ NYC, Chicago, SanFran, Seattle, Portland, Boston, ect. are the exception not the norm.

The majority of old downtowns in American cities are struggling with various degrees of economic decline and physical destruction/decay.

The limited number of downtowns which have maintained their vibrancy and economic relevance into the opening decade of the 21st century have done so because of a combination of the following factors:

A. Large city/region population
B. Decent city+regional mass transit to get people to/from the downtown without having to drive and take up enormous amount of space there which would detract from item G.
C. Lots of jobs in the city core to make it attractive for people to live in or near it or otherwise get there using convenient non-personal automobile forms of transportation.
E. High land values downtown to make using land in a productive manner (buildings) more economical than sitting fallow (surface parking lots).
F. A healthy proportion of city neighborhoods close to downtown occupied by residents who actively chose to live/seek out/remain there rather than just inhabiting these places by circumstance.
G. High citywide densities (and subsequent congestion) which make it more convenient for many city residents to CHOOSE mass transit over driving.
H. Plenty of companies, organizations, and institutions employing many people in the city core which have strong historical ties and a precedence of having established headquarters there. The benefits and "loyalty factor" of staying put for the long haul must outweigh gains to be had from packing bags and moving to where supposedly "the grass is greener".
I. A diversity of building types, ages, and sizes which all come together to form pedestrian-friendly streetscapes.
J. Mixed land uses on downtown streets being the norm, not not exception.
K. Interesting and attractive public spaces like squares, parks, plaza, waterfront promenades, ect.
L. A population-at-large that values the things a nice city center has to offer, even if they don't necessarily live in that sort of environment.

TOO MANY cities and metro areas in this country have become so spatially and economically fractured and decentralized that there are not enough of the above factors working in tandem to make the city and downtown at least somewhat relevant to the life of the metro area's average Joes/Janes.

[Jeff_in_Dayton]

Thanks for the information everyone. While I know that cities such as New York or Chicago are not losing their downtowns to suburbia, I read in The Economist that other, smaller cities have been trying to give their downtowns a major makeover with little success. Anyone who can verify this?

In general, this is correct for smaller citys and even some midsized citys. This has been an ongoing issue since the 1960s, at least.

[BTinSF]

^ NYC, Chicago, SanFran, Seattle, Portland, Boston, ect. are the exception not the norm.

The majority of old downtowns in American cities are struggling with various degrees of economic decline and physical destruction/decay.



I don't think so. I'd say the rust belt downtowns that are still in decline are the exceptions and there are a number of them but not a majority. I say this based on having grown up in and around Mid-Atlantic cities including Washington DC, Baltimore and, to some extent Philadelphia. These are all doing much better than they were in 1960's.

Baltimore especially, while I was going to school there from 1963 to 1967, was still an interesting mix of ethnic cultures but nothing new was getting built and middle class families were leaving in droves, being replaced by no one but the poor. Now all you have to do is read through the Baltimore threads here to see how much is happening. Even the area near my school, which then was an area of 20's/30's vintage row houses many of which had been divided up into apartments either for students or less affluent city dwellers, is now the very trendy "Charles Village".

And DC back then was becoming a government enclave surrounded by a giant ghetto of emptying storefronts, empty Victorian rowhouses, burned out buildings and rubble-strewn lots. The last of the 4 big downtown department stores had closed. City transportation relied on unreliable bus service only (plus cars full of suburbanites commuting to government jobs) since the streetcar tracks had been ripped out in the 50's. Middle and upple middle class holdouts huddled west of Rock Creek Park hoping their "moat" would keep the barbarians at bay. Now the city has a world class metro, booming ethnic neighborhoods, a solid black middle class and plenty of people with money who want to live downtown.

[Atomic Glee]

Downtown Fort Worth has been booming since the '90s. Lots of people moving downtown, tons of activity (led by Sundance Square, and now spreading to other parts of downtown), etc. The success is spreading to the neighborhoods around downtown Fort Worth - Fort Worth South, the Cultural District, the new Uptown neighborhood, etc. So, we're a city in the middle of America that has a lively and active downtown.

[shovel_ready]

Now the city has a world class metro, booming ethnic neighborhoods, a solid black middle class and plenty of people with money who want to live downtown.

Oh yeah duh, I totally forgot DC. Very impressive city center! I'm sure there are a few others I missed too which could fall into the "booming" category.

But really, even those downtowns which have passed their decline peak are still in what I'd call a "transitional" phase. Factor in all the midsized and smaller cities and there is still a long way to go.

[shovel_ready]

Downtown Fort Worth has been booming since the '90s. Lots of people moving downtown, tons of activity (led by Sundance Square, and now spreading to other parts of downtown), etc. The success is spreading to the neighborhoods around downtown Fort Worth - Fort Worth South, the Cultural District, the new Uptown neighborhood, etc. So, we're a city in the middle of America that has a lively and active downtown.

But are there a variety of retailers that actually sell stuff people use on a daily basis at somewhat-reasonable prices, or do downtown residents have to get in their cars and drive to big box stores in the burbs?

[LA21st]

I don't think so. I'd say the rust belt downtowns that are still in decline are the exceptions and there are a number of them but not a majority. I say this based on having grown up in and around Mid-Atlantic cities including Washington DC, Baltimore and, to some extent Philadelphia. These are all doing much better than they were in 1960's.

Baltimore especially, while I was going to school there from 1963 to 1967, was still an interesting mix of ethnic cultures but nothing new was getting built and middle class families were leaving in droves, being replaced by no one but the poor. Now all you have to do is read through the Baltimore threads here to see how much is happening. Even the area near my school, which then was an area of 20's/30's vintage row houses many of which had been divided up into apartments either for students or less affluent city dwellers, is now the very trendy "Charles Village".

And DC back then was becoming a government enclave surrounded by a giant ghetto of emptying storefronts, empty Victorian rowhouses, burned out buildings and rubble-strewn lots. The last of the 4 big downtown department stores had closed. City transportation relied on unreliable bus service only (plus cars full of suburbanites commuting to government jobs) since the streetcar tracks had been ripped out in the 50's. Middle and upple middle class holdouts huddled west of Rock Creek Park hoping their "moat" would keep the barbarians at bay. Now the city has a world class metro, booming ethnic neighborhoods, a solid black middle class and plenty of people with money who want to live downtown.


DC is doing great in some respects but still has MAJOR problems. Something disturbing about my former hometown area yesterday.A yahoo said 36% of DC residents are functionally illiterate. That is alarming! WTF.

[nec209]

I would like to know more about the history of a downtown and whether they are being "killed" as more and more people move to the suburbs. Any details are appreciated!

Are they not doing away of the downtown ? I know they don't build the downtown any more in new cities.

[Atomic Glee]

But are there a variety of retailers that actually sell stuff people use on a daily basis at somewhat-reasonable prices, or do downtown residents have to get in their cars and drive to big box stores in the burbs?

Until recently, the latter. That's changing quickly, though. Downtown is starting to get good variety - the current push is for more varied retail, and the Bass family (the local billionaires who own what seems like half of downtown and pour their heart and cash into it) have the power to get it done. Joseph A. Bank and Pappalagallo (women's clothing, and I know I misspelled that) have opened recently, and are doing good business.

Until recently, the urban core was lacking in daily life things, but that's changing quickly as well. Target opened a full-service Super Target as part of the mixed-use redevelopment of a historic Montgomery Ward store from the '20s on 7th Street just across the river from downtown proper, and the success of the project has spurred several major projects along that street. The Montgomery Ward building is finishing itself out with 240 condos, and up and down 7th are a huge amount of new mixed-use projects being built - So7, West 7th, and Museum Place being the big projects. All of them feature extensive retail space. The Super Target is within walking distance of downtown (though not as close as I'd like, but not too bad) and is on a major bus line, and the city's proposed new light rail line will run to it as well.

I think that 7th Street in the Cultural District on the west edge of downtown will become a major retail corridor very soon, and is quickly increasing in density and pedestrian quality and starting to grow with downtown. Downtown Fort Worth is rather compact, bounded by two rail lines and two river forks, and the 7th Street urban boom is right there close-in with it and easily accessed. We are nearing 10,000 downtown residents (not counting the booms in Uptown, the Cultural District, and Fort Worth South which all immediately border downtown), and predictions are that when we pass that mark there will be enough demand for improvement of the downtown retail mix. Fort Worth South (the cool, quirky, artsy urban neighborhood booming just south of downtown) is really coming alive as well, and there's rumors drifting about of a big grocery development there as well, of a more organic Whole Foods-style that would fit that area's sensibility very well.

This is all not counting the massive Trinity River Vision project that's starting to get off the ground, which will create a lake and islands on the north end of downtown, space for 25,000 new urban residences, and extensive retail space served by water ferry and light rail.

Urban Fort Worth isn't perfect, but it's extremely safe, clean, popular, and getting better by the day. I am incredibly proud of my city's progress in this matter and am part of a new generation of Fort Worthians pressing with our heart and soul to improve the urbanity of our city. We are making great strides. I tend to get misty-eyed and ramble about it, in fact - as you've probably noticed. :)

[shovel_ready]

^ Thanks for the overview :) I'm happy to hear your downtown is on quite an upswing. Best of luck, let's hope things get even better!

[condodweller]

What I've noticed is that, where downtown areas are experiencing revival, the improvement is mostly in retail -- ie., revived downtowns are generally open air shopping malls. Banks become quaint antique stores, feed stores (in agricultural towns) become quaint cafes and bakeries, port facilities become farmers' markets, and so on. What were once small or medium sized cities become suburbs within commuting distanhce of larger cities, and actual commerce moves to the big-box stores on the edge of town. Office space is not at such a premium when firms can operate with less staff due to increased electronic concentration of data, so much of it goes empty. This is not all bad -- it is, in fact, progress of a sort. Downtown areas thrived when cities and towns were independent in that they were, more or less, cut off from other urban and commercial areas, and when the smaller towns had some speciallized regional (low income based) agriculture or trade to offer; but that is no longer the case. Reading, PA no longer has a monopoly on car battery production, just as San Francisco (my home town) no longer has an operational port --and each, like so many other towns, has to make do with its diminished stature as a well-to-do bedroom community. Meanwhile, actual production and trade move abroad to where a class of urban poor are happy to do the jobs that once kept Downtown America alive.

[miketoronto]

Downtowns may be doing better today, but they are still not what they use to be in most cities. Downtowns Are reviving, but in most cities, they are being reduced from their role as the centre of the region, by suburban malls, office parks, and entertainment.

So downtown may be better today, but in a regional context, it also has less influence, and means less to most metropolitan residenst. Because they are not using the city on a regular basis anymore. Its sort of just a attraction to go to once a month or something, but downtown is losing its status as the heart of all things. The stats prove it.

[Marcu]

In a strange way, I feel that in some cities supertall developments have actually detracted from healthy downtown growth. It seems that in may American cities, like Atlanta, parts of LA, and St. Petersburg, there are a few tall buildings and a sudden drop off to car-oriented low density housing. In Europe, on the other hand, there aren't many cities with a lot of supertalls and as a result, moderate to high density (3 or 4 story houses) is more spread out and creates a more urban feel for a larger chunk of the city.

[Attrill]

All this doom and gloom about downtowns being "killed" or "losing their status" is about 30 years too late. Most downtowns stopped being the center of most urban areas a generation ago, what is happening now is a rebound that looks to continue for awhile.

Some cities are never going to come back because the region around them is dying, but most downtown areas are doing well and it looks like it will continue to get better.

There are some good article with stats here (http://www.jsonline.com/story/?id=373069),
here (http://www.fanniemaefoundation.org/programs/census_notes_3.html),
and here (http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20051115_birch.htm).

[bnk]

Thanks for the information everyone. While I know that cities such as New York or Chicago are not losing their downtowns to suburbia, I read in The Economist that other, smaller cities have been trying to give their downtowns a major makeover with little success. Anyone who can verify this?

The article you are ref.

SJ and LV are not your typical US cities though ....



Downtowns

Where the lights aren't bright

Mar 1st 2007 | LAS VEGAS AND SAN JOSE
From The Economist print edition


How two booming cities have tried, and failed, to revive their centres

YOU do not have to spend long in the company of a San Jose official before the old photographs come out. Chuck Reed, the mayor, has an aerial view of the city centre from the late 1970s on a wall in his office. Tom McEnery, who held the same post in the 1980s, has a bigger one showing several acres of empty lots. The point is to show how far the city has come in the past few decades. If downtown San Jose had really been transformed into the throbbing heart of Silicon Valley, though, it would not need old pictures to prove it.

Downtowns are an American invention, says Joel Kotkin, an expert on cities. London, Paris and Tokyo all lack a single centre where commerce, entertainment, shopping and political power are concentrated. Such cores did emerge in early 20th-century American cities thanks to steel-frame architecture, which made it possible to build high, and because they had central railway stations. Fifty years later, almost all were gutted by the internal-combustion engine, which enabled people and jobs to move to the suburbs. They have been trying to revive themselves ever since.

San Jose has attempted to create a commercial heart by selling city-owned land or even giving it away to developers. The city offers tax breaks and uses a portion of the property tax to pay for improvement projects. Since the late 1970s the redevelopment agency has shelled out $2 billion, almost two-thirds of it on downtown. It has built museums and theatres to lure people to the centre. Trams have been supplied to entice them out of their cars.

Such largesse has indisputably made the middle of San Jose more appealing than it used to be. By any measure other than an historical one, though, the campaign has been a failure. The office vacancy rate in downtown stands at 21%—higher than it was four years ago, during the dotcom slump, and almost twice as high as the Silicon Valley average. The theatres, which were supposed to lift downtown, now depend on the council to bail them out of trouble. In a city of 912,000 people, just 30,000 passengers ride trams each day. All this in a wealthy metropolis that has higher house prices than anywhere else in America, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Despite its anaemic condition, most visitors to San Jose at least know where downtown is. That is not the case in Las Vegas. The historical centre, with its string of small casinos and its neon cowboy, once seemed glitzy. It is now a shadow of the Las Vegas Strip, which has grown dementedly since the late 1980s, building ever larger, more exuberant hotels. Despite offering better odds than their competitors, the downtown casinos took in $630m last year, compared with $6.7 billion on the Strip. And they are the brightest spots in the area. Beside them lie cheap motels, shuttered shops and bail bondsmen.

Local boosters now hope that high-rise apartments will bring life and money downtown. Perhaps, but not soon. A wobbly property market has shaken out several projects. The scale of development at present—120 condominiums built, with another 2,748 under construction or taking reservations—is small stuff in a metropolitan area that added more than 70,000 residents a year in the 1990s, most of them in the suburbs.

The only reliable way to bring people downtown is to force them. Las Vegas has put federal, county and city courts a few blocks to the south of the original Glitter Gulch, together with a jail. As a result, local offices are filled with lawyers. San Jose's council has moved downtown into a glass tower designed by Richard Meier. The building is striking, especially as it sits in a fundamentally low-rise area. A city official who needs spare parts for his car need walk only one block.

One of San Jose's obvious problems is that it must compete against San Francisco, which lies 48 miles (77km) to the north. Yet the strongest competition is local. Suburban shops exert such a strong allure that it is hard to persuade retailers to open downtown. Both Las Vegas and San Jose have tried to jump-start redevelopment by building shopping malls in the urban core; both attempts failed utterly.

Not so long ago, downtown shops could at least claim to offer an urban alternative to the strip malls and boxy stores dotted about the suburbs. No longer. Santana Row in San Jose is a shopping street with distinctive, French-accented architecture, art galleries, shops and pavement cafés, with some apartments mixed in. It is exactly the kind of urban environment that the downtown boosters say they want, but for two details. Santana Row is three miles from the city centre, and was built in 2002. This fake downtown, with ample parking and no homeless people, is doing so well that similar schemes are mooted elsewhere.

“San Jose needs to be more than just a nice, suburban community,” says Mr Reed, the mayor. But perhaps it does not. An unconvincing downtown has not held down home-prices in San Jose, just as it has not arrested Las Vegas's extraordinary growth. All it has done is give officials a sense of inferiority.

[shovel_ready]

^ Sounds like a very similar situation Buffalo is in. Only here, the real estate is a fraction the cost and our region isn't growing much.

Giving away land for free to try and entice retailers to locate in your downtown says one thing: They probably don't want to be there in its current condition.

Rather than being obsessed with propping up their downtown overnight, these types of cities should be addressing more grassroots issues, like improving neighborhoods. Attracting wealthier residents into the neighborhoods ringing a downtown seems to be a more holistic way of attracting retail. Businesses follow people, not the other way around.

[miketoronto]

Cities like San Jose should be blaming their city councils for alot of the downtown decline.

If San Jose wants to revive their downtown, then why did they all a stupid fake downtown lifestyle centre to be built like 5min from downtown?

It is stupid decisions like that, for the reason of our downtown decline.

City councils like San Jose that control such large swaths of land, should have strong bylaws in place to protect downtown.

Our cities have done it to themselves. Why allow malls to open in city limits? Why allow hotels to be built in areas outside of downtown? The list goes on.

Our cities have got to have more control over where things are built.

Look at Oshawa, Ontario for example. The city complains about wanting to revive the downtown. Yet two years ago, they allowed a university campus to be built up in farm fields north of the downtown, instead of building the campus right downtown.
Not only has putting the uni out there not helped the downtown. But it has also made it a pain in the ass to get people to the school via public transit. All the bus routes are centred on downtown, that now the transit systems have to run special bus routes up to the university, just to get kids there.

If our cities want to make the core a priority, then they gotta start demanding and only allowing certain things to be built downtown.
Instead of approving a hotel out by the highway. Demand it be downtown or not building permit.

Just little steps like that, would do a lot.

[bryson662001]

All this doom and gloom about downtowns being "killed" or "losing their status" is about 30 years too late. Most downtowns stopped being the center of most urban areas a generation ago, what is happening now is a rebound that looks to continue for awhile.

Some cities are never going to come back because the region around them is dying, but most downtown areas are doing well and it looks like it will continue to get better.

I am going to agree with Attrill on this one. After declining in the '60's through the "80's, the average US downtown has made a comeback in the last 10-15 years and will continue in that direction for the foreseeable future.
Few downtowns are as important as they were in the 1940's and probably never will be but I think most are getting better, not worse, at least for now.

[Attrill]

San Jose never really had a downtown, it was built to sprawl. It grew in the 50's and 60's and all planning reflected the auto-centric ideas of the time. That's compounded by the fact that the airport is downtown which has limited the height of buildings and discourages residential development. San Jose would need to be rebuilt from scratch to be able to have a thriving downtown.

[fflint]

Cities like San Jose should be blaming their city councils for alot of the downtown decline.
Mike, why do you prattle on about places you don't know or understand?

San Jose should blame mid-20th century "urban redevelopment"--which is to say, the wholesale destruction of the urban parts of the city--and anybody who authorized it. If downtown San Jose had survived, at least it would have a chance to be gentrified and revived, but with it plowed under there's no chance. The city council today cannot bring back what was razed in the 1960s.

If San Jose wants to revive their downtown, then why did they all a stupid fake downtown lifestyle centre to be built like 5min from downtown?
What place would that be, Mike? I see you're trotting out your vast lack of knowledge of the Bay Area again--I mean, why let total ignorance of a place you've never been stop you from incorrectly describing it, right?

For over 20 years, the city has tried very hard to build a new downtown from scratch where the old one once existed. It became clear by the early 1980s that the razing of the old downtown was a disaster, and mayors and redevelopment agencies have tried valiantly since then to right the historical wrong. Clearly they have not been able to get far, although I should mention it is a much more viable and functional downtown than Las Vegas', which was also covered in the essay.

But let's be clear about something: all the effort in the world cannot erase historical trends, and by that I mean decentralization and suburbanization. San Jose became a sunbelt sprawler--like virtually every place else that was built anew after WWII--during the years there was no viable downtown. Virtually every person who has lived in San Jose, ever, has done so without knowing a true downtown, and the land use patterns as well as the folkways reflect that decentralized, suburban, post-war reality.

Barring shopping and dining in the city outside its anemic and out-of-the-way downtown is simply unrealistic, given what kind of a place San Jose became in the decades it had no downtown at all. People everywhere shop, dine and go to the movies. They'll move, especially the wealthy and well-educated types that make up San Jose's citizenry, if they cannot or do not get those things where they live. They aren't going to suffer massive traffic jams or wait decades for hoped-for reconstruction of downtown only to enjoy basic lifestyle amenities.

[BG918]

The current trend of building lifestyle centers that mimic urban settings or traditional downtowns is hurting downtowns in mid-sized and small cities across the U.S. Some will say that these are better than the massive indoor malls surrounded by seas of parking popular in the 80's and 90's but they are still hurting the core as hotels, restaurants, and especially retail cluster in these centers, which are often still on the fringes of cities or even in the inner city where it hurts even more.

I live in a college town where this is happening. There is a new lifestyle center being built by the highway that will feature a lot of stores and restaurants that could go downtown, which is not that active but has lots of potential with Main Street a busy auto corridor through the city, nice older neighborhoods to the south, and the college campus about a half mile away. Of course there is the college-oriented district by campus with more local shops, restaurants, and bars so it would seem downtown would be a good place for more national retailers, the same ones this lifestyle center 3 miles away will take away. The same thing is happening all over the country.

[Cro Burnham]

While US downtowns are making something of a comeback from their lowest point in the mid 80s, by and large, with exception of the few obvious cases (SF, NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc.), they are still dismal when compared to the cities of just about every other country in the developed world - and the developing world, to a degree.

This is a reflection of the value system here - the vast majority of Americans HATE cities, HATE not driving, even now, unless, as was mentioned above, it is in a Disneyfied half-assed imitation of suburbs shoehorned into a few historic buildings with plenty of parking nearby.

Most of the emergent downtowns are shells of their pre-war selves meant to appeal mainly to conventioneers and suburban daytrippers and school groups. These are not the living, breathing, working downtowns that exist throughout of the rest of the world.

The same Americans who elected our current sub-primate president (the personification of the anti-urban US mentality) are pretty much the same ones who have pretty much permanently severed ties with an urban way of life in this country.

It is sad, but the US is largely an anti-urban nation, and those places where urbanism has basically been completely destroyed over the last 60 years - the South, large parts of the Midwest, much of the Northeast hinterlands - can't really turn back. There's nothing left to turn back to, and nobody who wants to anyway.

[dktshb]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/los_angeles_metro/la-me-downtown30mar30,1,2521813.story?coll=la-commun-los_angeles_metro&ctrack=1&cset=true

snippets fro the article linked above By Cara Mia DiMassa, Times Staff WriterMarch 30, 2007:

According to Bastian's group, there are nearly 30,000 people living downtown — up sharply from just a few years ago. With 7,500 units under construction, the downtown population could rise to more than 40,000 by the end of next year.

Bars and restaurants are opening at a fast clip in the area, and big-name chefs are signing leases on spaces downtown — especially along a stretch of 7th Street that has been the symbol of downtown's tangled history as a retail destination.

Retail sales in downtown ZIP Codes have been rising steadily since the late 1990s, according to the California Board of Equalization. In fiscal year 2005-06, the last year for which statistics are available, retail sales totaled $1.7 billion — up 7% from the year before.

*********************************************************

The article also mentions the long awaited arrival of Ralphs (grocery store) once again to Downtown after its departure in 1950.

[LordMandeep]

I remember what some guy said about some American downtowns...

The reason why some them are so nice and clean is because no one goes there apart from Tourists.

If they are not clean and mpty, everyone there is scared to go downtown.

If they're semi-clean, but lively, thats a real city...

[dktshb]

In a strange way, I feel that in some cities supertall developments have actually detracted from healthy downtown growth. It seems that in may American cities, like Atlanta, parts of LA, and St. Petersburg, there are a few tall buildings and a sudden drop off to car-oriented low density housing. In Europe, on the other hand, there aren't many cities with a lot of supertalls and as a result, moderate to high density (3 or 4 story houses) is more spread out and creates a more urban feel for a larger chunk of the city. You're inaccurate as far as your depiction of Los Angeles... the communities that surround downtown are the most dense parts of the city and the metropolitan area maintains a density second to none in America. LA's downtown population has increased 20% in 2 years... the downtown growth right now is not only healthy it's exceptional.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Los_Angeles

[Strayone]

If downtowns are not becoming more attractive in citys it must be due to poor leadership in that community. Since Iv'e lived here Austin has allways had a vibrant DT. And it has put a heavy emphasis on directing population growth toward it. For the life of me I can't figure out why there isn't a movie theatre smack dab in the DT area.