Some Thoughts on the Economic Revitalization of Small Town Downtowns

Discussions about the traits of strong downtowns and what makes them succeed usually focus on larger cities such as Vancouver, BC, Portland, OR, New York, NY or Charleston, SC. However, a lot can also be learned by looking at things on a smaller scale. This happened to the authors, when we recently looked at downtowns in two small Wisconsin communities. What we learned from them is applicable to many other communities of comparable size.

Our experiences in these two communities certainly confirmed that two basic and broadly held revitalization tenets are just as applicable to small communities as they are to large ones: the need for a comprehensive approach to downtown revitalization and the need to focus on leveraging existing assets. The focus here will be on three other topics that evidence these tenets and deserve our attention:

Posted by: N. David Milder, DANTH, Inc. and Andrew Dane, Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc.

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