Hi All,

Here’s a teaser and a link to an article of mine that was recently published in the IEDC’s Economic Development Journal. I think its title aptly signals its content.

Let’s Recognize and Leverage the Opportunities the Covid Crisis Has Given Our Downtowns: Some Examples

Abstract

Since the early stages of the Covid19 crisis, our downtowns, especially the larger ones, have been pictured in the media to be either in serious decline or on the verge of failure. While there have been …

As many of you may know, the Downtown Curmudgeon is also the founding editor of The American Downtown Revitalization Review –The ADRR. Since almost its inception, members of The ADRR’s advisory board have engaged in an ongoing discussion on a wide range of subjects. A subset of those discussions has been the email give and take between me and Mike Berne, who blogs as The Retail Contrarian. I’d say that we agree about 60% to 70% of the time, but …

By N David Milder

Introduction

Throughout the pandemic suburban downtowns have stood out from our largest downtowns in their ability to recover. This was no accident, but the result of the smaller districts not being dominated by monofunctional office clusters, and often actually being far more multifunctional than their larger cousins.

The pandemic has sparked numerous claims that our CBDs (Central Business Districts) are now in decline, and perhaps even perilously so. (1)  What is usually lost in such pessimistic analyses is that …

By N. David Milder

Over the past decade I have become increasingly focused on what I have been calling Central Social Districts (CSDs).  The simple analytical framework I’ve been developing saw downtowns being composed of two major components: Central Business Districts (CBDs) and CSDs. However, over the past year or so, email discussions with members of The ADRR board, and an interview by Rob Steuteville at CNU’s Public Square have prompted me to take a much closer look at the vocabulary …