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Uploaded byDella Rucker, AICP, CEcD
New economies need old places RevitalizeWA 05 06 15
The document discusses the importance of historic downtowns in fostering local economies by providing unique options, encouraging interdependence among businesses, and promoting community engagement. It highlights how revitalizing main streets can attract people and support small businesses, ultimately facilitating economic growth. The emerging economy requires leveraging old places to meet new needs, thus emphasizing the significance of nurturing local businesses for long-term success.
New economies need old places RevitalizeWA 05 06 15
- 1. New economies needold places: practical business and money reasons why Main Streets make cities better Della G. Rucker, AICP CEcD Wise Economy Workshop For RevitalizeWA May 6, 2015
- 2. Your Presenter • Allthose letters? • Economic Revitalization/Public Engagement • My Thing: Communities that work long term– ▫ Strong economy ▫ Resilient economy ▫ Invested people www.wiseeonomy.com Barrygott.com
- 4. • French revolutionpicture with slash through it
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- 6. Four drivers ofthe Local Economy Revolution •Multiplication of Options •Quest for Uniqueness •Interdependence Dependence •People Power • Spoiler Alert: Main Streets support all of these.
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- 10. What do downtownshave? • Different building types • Different types/sizes of spaces • Different appearances • More choices… Multiplication of Options!
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- 12. Quest for Uniqueness Value= measure of importance/relevance/need Uniqueness = relevance to a niche Service to a niche = importance/relevance/need to niche Uniqueness = economic value to niche
- 13. However, Uniqueness =/= valueto non-niche. Sorry.
- 14. And downtowns? • Unique •Niche! • Value to Niche! • (Not Value to non-niche). • (sorry.)
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- 19. OK. Downtowns? • Visualinterdependency • + Physical proximity (“collisions”) • +Small business owner friendly • = Interdependence Petrie dishes!
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- 23. Let me guess.Downtowns… • People Power depends on something people emotionally connect to. • For lots of businesses trying to use People Power, that’s hard to do. • Downtowns have things that people emotionally connect to. In spades!
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- 27. Historic Downtowns havesome big advantages in the emerging economy. What can we do to capitalize on that?
- 28. How we tryto fix business districts (and often fail) • “We just need a streetscape!”
- 29. How we tryto fix business districts(and often fail) • “We gotta get rid of those vacant buildings!”
- 30. How we tryto fix business districts (and often fail) • Cars, cars, cars
- 32. What did wesay the emerging economy wants back in the beginning? •Multiple Options •Power of Uniqueness •Interdependence Awareness •People Power
- 33. Multiple Options • Biggeris not always better • Small has advantages • Tiny can be even better ▫ Capacity ▫ Collisionable-ness • Are you offering start up or experimentation-sized spaces?
- 36. Power of Uniqueness •Conventional thinking: non-cookie cutter =hard. ▫ Business and real estate ▫ TMTR (Too Much Thought Required!) ▫ So not for everyone. • But market for “Conventional” is glutted ▫ Retail, service, real estate ▫ Race to the Bottom • How is your business gonna stand out?
- 38. Interdependence • How muchcapacity do you have? • How much do you wish you had? • How alone are you? • How alone do you want to be?
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- 41. People Power • Peoplewant to be where other people are ▫ More than ever before? • People attract other people • People make people feel safer • People increasingly do weird things to be where other people are going to be. • People care about places that have people. • Given that, how do we attract people?
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- 44. Your Downtowns arethe Nursery of the New Economy. • New Needs =/= Old Needs • New Things Need Old Places ▫ Identity ▫ Access ▫ Value • New business growth is crucial to economic success ▫ Increasingly, you can’t buy it ▫ Increasingly, you have to grow it. ▫ More of it stays if you grow your own.
- 45. Do realize… • Noteveryone belongs in a nursery ▫ Nursery is a Niche in the larger Local Economy. • Babies often need some help ▫ Babies can be a pain. ▫ But (unless we find a way to live forever)…
- 46. We all needbabies.
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- 48. Thank you! For moreinformation: www.wiseeconomy.com www.localeconomyrevolutionbook.com Twitter: @dellarucker Also on LinkedIn, Facebook, SoundCloud, YouTube, etc. www.wiseeonomy.com
Editor's Notes
- #17 Here’s the key problem I see, though: whether your local economic development types are focused on new construction or business retention, their strategies remain fundamentally the same: interact one-on-one with businesses and try to do things to help that specific business succeed. Their day-to-day focus is typically on individual businesses, not on the context in which those businesses and many others operate. That model worked OK decades ago, when the major drivers of a local economy consisted primarily of a small number of large business – whether recruiting or retaining, the number of entities that needed to be touched in order to meet economic development goals was pretty small. So that one-on-one, linear, direct-service-provider model worked OK for economic development in the 20th century industrial era. But we are not in that era anymore. You already know that, but here is one interesting piece: the average size of business establishment is declining… and has been declining for decades. Census numbers show it down to 15 by 2010, from over 17 in 2000. Statistically, that’s a significant drop in 10 years. Meanwhile, the number of self-employed and micro-establishments continues to climb, and to varying degrees that crosses all business sectors. The number of self employed is up 14% since 2000 alone. Businesses are smaller on average today than even a decade ago, and more and more people are now self employed. As a result, the simple realities of contemporary economic development requires leaders to reevaluate how they think about economic development. The practice of economic development professionals needs to shift toward facilitating a business ecosystem and away from direct intervention, command-and-control approaches. But the responsibility doesn’t just lie with the bureaucrats: individual community members and business owners must assume more of a role in localizing economic development, to help build the community’s quality of life by improving its long-term economic health and resilience.
- #29 One of the “magic levers” that planners often default to is the streetscape: if we just make it look better, if we make it pretty and clean and appealing, then businesses will show up. Certainly we need to fix safety hazards like the sidewalk shown in the first picture, but we don’t have to look hard to find plenty of evidence that a streetscape is not a magic lever to economic prosperity. The picture on the right shows a street with a 10-year old streetscape (so it wasn’t just built yesterday.) Every building to the right of this sidewalk is vacant. And I didn’t put much effort into finding this picture.
- #30 Of course, sometimes people think that the vacant buildings themselves are the problem, and vacant buildings can certainly have an impact. But vacant buildings are also necessary to a healthy economic environment – especially if you have small independent retailers and service providers. Vacant buildings are a natural part of the life cycle of businesses and commercial districts, and in a mature commercial district, vacancies are critical to being able to support the kind of growth and change that keeps people engaged. If we focus too much on filling vacant spaces, we could be cutting off the opportunity for the district to grow and evolve in the ways that best fit the market. Even if we have a lot of them, vacant buildings are an asset to be leveraged, not a problem to be solved. That’s a key differentiation when it comes to thinking about what we do with them.
- #31 I spent 10 years working in planning/engineering firms…. And if I had a nickel for all the worrying about cars we did , I’d be in Aruba on a sailboat today. We fuss about moving cars, slowing cars, speeding up cars, storing cars… cars, cars, cars. And yet, look at any successful retail district, like Chicago’s Loop or Beverly Hills or TriBeCa or SoDo… or this picture right here. What do you see beyond the SUV’s? PEOPLE. If a district has things, places and experiences that people want, they’ll be there. Period. Traffic congestion, distant parking, meters, permits…. 9 times out of 10, people recognize that those are just the cost of doing business, a side effect of being in a place where cool stuff is going on. Where the cars are and what they are doing is a lot less central to the experience and value of these districts than we often think they are. If you ask a business owner why their business is failing, a lot of them will gripe about parking, but that’s an answer that needs a deep look below the surface, as I’ll explain in a minute. Don’t get me wrong, we need to have parking, and we need to manage air pollution, and we need to keep pedestrians safe. But is someone is trying to sell you the idea that “fixing” your traffic flow or your parking is _the_ solution to your commercial district’s problems, don’t buy it. It’s just one piece of the puzzle, and from the customer’s point of view, a much smaller piece than you might think.