Knowledge Center
Planning, Design and Infrastructure
The urban place manager emphasizes efforts on the built environment because of the significant impacts they have on the quality of life and one’s authentic experience of a place. Every place is different; therefore, place management strategies should respond to a myriad of place-based identifiers including, the place’s specific scale, status, culture, climate, community vision, goals, and mission, keeping at the forefront considerations of sustainability and resilience.
Through numerous approaches, such as land and real estate development, zoning and land-use, streetscape improvements, transit-oriented development, multi-modal connections, sustainable infrastructure, attainable housing initiatives and historic preservation among others, place managers enhance the quality of life for all stakeholders of a place.
Curb Your Enthusiasm: It’s Not Just About Cars Anymore
The advent of smart and shared transportation systems, spanning from automated shuttles to electric scooters, is rapidly changing mobility in our downtowns. From creating loading zones for rideshare pick-ups, finding space for expanded bike share docks, and defining micro-mobility parking zones, to re-purposing travel lanes, designing shared spaces, managing increased shipping + deliveries, and removing parking requirements, downtowns across the country are handling new challenges creatively.
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The Changing Face of Economic Development: Land Use, Sustainability, and Housing
Millennial demographics, internet-fueled lifestyles, and a sharing economy (rides, workplace) alter land use and tax generation priorities for cities. Retail is no longer just about retail, with “place,” authenticity, and “trips,” becoming the defining components of a successful town center. Concurrently, the state is driving cities to change land use processes based on climate control and affordable housing mandates, while providing development incentives through new incentives and
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Growth Without Gridlock: Making the Case For Mobility Investments
Downtowns are transforming into more people-centered places by actively prioritizing transit, biking, and walking: the key to moving more people in the same street space. Not only does this require a different approach to planning and street design, but also requires a paradigm shift in thinking. In previously auto-centric cities, changing the status quo takes significant political will and intentional effort. In this session, hear cities’ strategies for making the case for sustainable
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Housing Attainability in Downtown Portland
In recent years, housing costs in Portland have been rising as the city becomes increasingly attractive within the State of Maine and as compared to other regions nationally. There has been little development of new housing affordable to current Portland residents and very little construction of new housing at all between 2007 and 2014. To address the issues of housing availability and affordability the City of Portland adopted a host of strategic policies and initiatives.
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Parking Management
Following significant budget cuts for the City of Tempe in 2010, the Downtown Tempe Agency proposed to City leadership to take over the parking enforcement and presented a plan that involved using existing funds generated by the on-street meter program. They knew introducing a more consistent program would enable parking revenues to increase. The DTA also planned to replace the single space coin-fed meters with credit-card-enabled meters.
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Nighttime Economy Infrastructure Planning Guide and Checklist
A checklist of priorities a BID should have in mind at various stages of the development of a nighttime economy.
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Creating a Physical Sense of Place by Enhancing Infrastructure
By seeking improvements to landscaping, pedestrian lighting, wayfinding, visual identity, and event infrastructure, the Cherry Creek North BID leveraged a massive infrastructure project to quite literally build a new sense of place for the area. Countless hours of stakeholder and community outreach were undertaken in addition to hiring the foremost experts in design, architecture, and planning.
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Downtown Mobility Planning: Connect Downtown
The Greater Des Moines Partnership collaborated with the Iowa Chapter of the Urban Land Institute and the City of Des Moines to seek transportation improvements that could help increase downtown vibrancy. Collectively, the organizations analyzed existing conditions by measuring a multitude of metrics such as traffic counts, bicycle usage, pedestrian traffic, ease of crossing at intersections, sidewalk connectivity, bicycle facilities, connections to trails, lane widths, and number of
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Looking for the Missing Middle
This session is devoted to one of our most challenging economic development topics—how to build middle-market housing in your downtown/urban community. Throughout the US, cities are struggling with this missing middle challenge. Without a solution, cities are left with high end luxury and low-end affordable housing. This panel brought together a developer, a public agency, and local planning expert to discuss middle income housing from three very different perspectives.
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Driving Retail Growth with Holiday Pop Up Shops
With over 50,000 square feet of retail space available in a six-block radius, the Downtown Partnership of Colorado Springs, CO stepped in to attract new temporary, pop-up businesses during the holiday season as a means not only filling vacancies, but attracting customers to help preserve the retailers that still remained.
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