downtown revitalization - JC Shepard(dot)com

Main Street America and the Revival of Downtown

Downtowns are enjoying a renaissance as the malls across suburban America shrivel up and get bulldozed by the dozens. It wasn’t so many years ago the big legacy department stores like Sears and Wards fled downtowns for the malls. Now those stores are no more—replaced in turn by Amazon and its online copycats—while the authenticity […]

Smart Growth in Rural Communities: Planning That Works

Walkable rural small town surrounded by farmland, with a compact downtown, farmers market, and mixed-use buildings supporting community-centered growth. Smart growth in rural communities.

The Problem With the Pattern We’ve Built Rural sprawl does not look like urban sprawl, but it produces many of the same outcomes: longer distances between people and services, higher per-capita infrastructure costs, degraded natural lands, and built environments that make daily life harder for anyone who cannot drive. The pattern is familiar across rural […]

You may also like

You may also like