Public input helps city define the downtown footprint, allocate resources.
(Mountain Lakes, NJ, November 17, 2016) — In Akron, OH, work is underway to redefine the footprint of the city’s many neighborhoods.
"What we’re doing is looking at
all of our city
neighborhoods — Akron has 25 semi-official
neighborhoods, with downtown being one of them," says
Jason Segedy, the city’s director of planning and
urban development.
The project is essential, Segedy says, because properly drawn and named neighborhoods should reflect what residents know to be true, but also because city officials can then use those neighborhoods to better gauge what’s happening in smaller segments of the 62-square-mile city, and to figure out how best to serve each individual area.
To gather input, the city created MyAkronNeighborhood.com, and invited people to visit and redraw the city.
The Downtown Akron Partnership is carefully watching the results of this work.
"To the larger community, and to people from outside our city, downtown boundaries do not look the same," says Suzie Graham, president and CEO of the Partnership. "Any time you are approaching the urban core, you say you are going downtown. We understand that while our work sometimes centers on that [Special Improvement District] boundary, we are influenced, and we influence, the work that goes on outside of those borders."
Details on the Akron program along with insights into Cincinnati, OH’s, efforts to reduce panhandling and homelessness and Baltimore, MD’s new retail attraction program appear in the November issue of Downtown Idea Exchange newsletter.
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For over 50 years, the Downtown Research & Development Center has acted as the information clearinghouse on practical strategies and tactics for revitalizing the hearts of our cities and towns.
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