Reviving the American Mainstreet

ESRI – Main Street once defined the American city. Tight rows of busy storefronts, bustling civic centers, and gathering spaces provided jobs, tax revenue, and community character. Today’s downtowns tell a different story: empty buildings, declining tax revenue, and poor land management.

But many city planners aren’t accepting decline. They’re using geographic information systems (GIS) technology to model every building, street, and parcel in 3D—then testing scenarios before committing resources. This precision lets them identify where investment will work, what needs to be preserved, and how new development fits with existing character. The result: they’re boosting the local economy, building community, and preserving cultural identity. These new urban business models have other benefits: curbing suburban sprawl, improving air quality, and protecting farmland and other green space in and around our cities.

Across the nation, this approach is turning faded downtowns into standout destinations. Once transformed, a city’s downtown can generate more tax revenue than any other neighborhood in the municipality. That boost to the treasury helps cities pay the cost of delivering services residents expect in every part of town, including police, fire, and water. And more communities are taking notice, shaping their own investment strategies by borrowing ideas from the most promising locations.

Millions of acres of rural US land have been cleared for housing subdivisions, strip malls, and highways, often encroaching on wetlands and other wildlife habitats.

Such planning decisions have rarely paid off, according to land value consultant Joe Minicozzi, founder of Urban3. Suburban neighborhoods, he said, too often fail to generate enough tax revenue to cover the cost of extending city services to those communities.

Minicozzi helps city leaders visualize this imbalance. He makes GIS maps that compare property and sales tax revenue generated per acre in downtown districts versus suburban zones—and the difference is dramatic. Dense, mixed-use downtowns attract more people, businesses, and investment, driving up land values and economic activity.

Reducing sprawl by revitalizing downtowns leads to other advantages for cities: cleaner air, preservation of vital farmland and forests, and less environmental damage. It’s also a chance to address center city parking lots. Many planners say parking lots are a low-value land use and interrupt the pedestrian experience.

“Places like Buffalo, Akron, Houston, and Phoenix tore down half their buildings to make room for parking,” said Robert Steuteville of the Congress for the New Urbanism. “Unfortunately, they were destroying what attracts people to a downtown—other people, other buildings, other land uses.”

Now, cities are removing single-family zoning, easing parking minimums, and encouraging greater density near transit.

“More people will live in walkable places if they’re given the opportunity to and if we build enough of it so the prices come down,” Steuteville said.

These ideas aren’t just theoretical—they’re shaping real decisions in cities across the country.

Getting Started: 10 Principles for Downtown Revitalization

1. Identify your city’s personality.
2. Forge partnerships with the private development sector, nonprofits, and local philanthropic groups.
3. Develop long- and short-range plans, with input and collaboration from the community.
4. Codify your plan to ensure that future development will conform or be prepared to fund the difference between the plan and the product.
5. Preserve green and blue spaces—riverfronts and environmentally sensitive areas—and develop around them.
6. Preserve historic buildings and save and convert older buildings for reuse. In time, these add to the character, authenticity, and atmosphere of your downtown.
7. Develop transit for every user type, including buses, bikes, and trucks, understanding that pedestrians are primary users. Make walkable spaces safe, interesting, and comfortable.
8. Build a mix of housing types and retail types to attract and serve a range of ages and income levels. A downtown needs to be for every stage of life.
9. Build a mix of safe and accessible public spaces—large and small, some designed for physical activities such as tennis or soccer, and others for relaxation and observing nature.
10. Make downtown festive, with events within the public spaces.

Source: Edward Kinney, City of Greenville, South Carolina

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Wayne Creed

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