Downtown, Inc: How America Rebuilds Cities

6" x 9", soft cover, 398 pages, MIT Press, $32. Table of Contents Read the Introduction Order Now

Downtown, Inc. provides a detailed and comprehensive view of the progress made in rebuilding American cities from the false starts and flawed plans of the early 1950s to the present.

Central to this text are case studies of the development of successful downtown retail centers, including Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Pike Place Market in Seattle, Town Square/Saint Paul Center in St. Paul, Plaza Pasadena, and Horton Plaza in San Diego.

Each detailed case study includes information on the public-private partnerships which made them possible and the subsidies developed to overcome the premium for in-town land and parking, the carrying charges for slow-moving projects, and the reluctance of retailers to venture downtown.

When this book was written in 1991, the downtown retail center was a realtively new concept. The strategies used by these retail center pioneers provide a wealth of information on how to successfully bring retail development to your downtown.

Table of Contents

1. A Bunch of Nobodies
• Legacy of the big stores
• Vanishing crowds
2. Sanitizing the City
• Alliances: The Pittsburgh model
• Highway detours
• The urban renewal takeover
• Tracking the money
• Demolition by the acre
• The cover-up
• Casualty count
3. Blueprint for Indifference
• Designed for isolation
• Nobody knows the rubble I’ve seen
• The freeway revolt

• Losing urban renewal

• Persuasive protests
• Progress but no applause
4. Would the Shopping Mall Play Downtown?
• Sanctuaries for shopping
• Competing with easy street
• A tonic for tired cities?
• Roadblocks
• The gatekeepers
• Searching for new locations
5. Pasadena: No Bed of Roses
• Inventing a transplant
• Sweetheart deals
• Pledging future taxes
• Protective maneuvers
• Sharing troubles
6. Entrepreneurial Cities and Maverick Developers
• A landmark in Boston
• James Rouse: Mixing pleasure with business
• A public market in Seattle
• John Clise: The coalition-builder
• Proving St. Paul’s competence
• George Latimer: The Mayor’s glue
• A porno district in San Diego
• Ernest Hahn: Endurance and flexibility
• Gerald Trimble: The public sector developer
7. Deal-Making
• Testing the waters
• Deals to match projects
• Development by consensus
• City hall deal makers
• Coping with crisis
• Negotiable designs
• The relationship is the deal
8. Getting and Spending
• Paying without pain
• The federal pipeline: Good to the last drop
• Digging into local resources
• Safe money for risky projects
• Dovetailing dollars into joint ventures
9. Open for Business
• Faneuil Hall: Marketing the unusual
• Pike Place: Preserving the past
• Town Square: Making the setting special
• Horton Plaza: Designing fantasies
10. Popular Success and Critical Dismay
• Fear of commerce
• Artificial environments
• Highbrows and lowbrows
11. Privatizing the City
• Running risks: Burbank, St. Paul, Detroit
• Setup for scandal
• How public is a mall?
• Security at a price
• The chaining of main street
12. Marketplace Contributions
• Uses of commercialism
• Taming Times Square and Bryant Park
• School for management
• The hiding hand
• Selling Columbus Circle
13. Downtown Malls and the City Agenda
• Corporate territory
• 250 Empire State Buildings
• Lodgings and lobbies
• Conventioneers
• The gentry come to town
• Stagecraft
• Big league ambitions
• Logic in the patchwork
14. An Unfinished Renaissance Indicting City Hall
• Manufacturing myths: New York and Pittsburgh
• Is development unfair?
• Where is the opposition?
• Bargaining for downtown jobs: Baltimore and Boston
• Slowing the pace
• The mall business
• Do cities learn?

Index

Your Guarantee of Satisfaction

Downtown, Inc: How America Rebuilds Cities is guaranteed. If you are not 100% satisfied, you may return it within 30 days for a full refund.

About the Author

Bernard J. Frieden is Ford Professor of Urban Development and Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author and editor of eight books and more than 60 articles on housing and city development.

Lynne B. Sagalyn is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Director of the MBA Real Estate Program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

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