Planning the Next Step
Many cities have invested countless dollars and boundless energy into revitalizing their downtowns and neighborhoods. I have often asked their leaders to imagine what would happen to these areas if they were to lose five or six of their 10 most popular local businesses. Before, the question was hypothetical, intended to illustrate how these establishments punch far above their weight in supporting their places. For some places, that question—like many others—is no longer hypothetical.
This is a difficult, uncertain period. The way cities operate will change. What we do not know yet is to what extent they will change for the better.
In the coming weeks, we will learn more about COVID-19’s immediate impact on the health and safety of our communities and the nation’s medical infrastructure. For now, local governments must help to flatten the curve and set the stage for our medical organizations to respond to the current crisis. At the same time, they must do whatever is possible to maintain necessary functions, keep the economy going, support their citizens, and do all they can to move forward.
Hopefully, the virus' impact will peak soon and life will start getting back to normal, but this will likely have significant ramifications on municipalities. Cities may be left with smaller tax bases, more uncertainty, and more obligations to provide basic services to citizens. And a variety of vital businesses—small and large—will struggle to reopen or stay open.
Communities need hope, recovery, and a return to a sense of normality. They must share a bold vision, and civic leaders will be called upon to guide them. To do so, they must start to shed the bad habits of the past:
“Some day plans" that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, which often sit on the shelf, largely unimplemented
Development strategies which focus almost exclusively on large projects, while ignoring small developers
Not making plans for the next 6-12 months, while waiting for years for long-term plans to be funded
A lack of strong support for the “Mom-and-Pop” businesses that are necessary to attract investment and visitors to Main Street.
For the last 6 years, ASH+LIME has focused on helping cities address these issues. We’re part of a movement that recognizes that cities are hampered by a status quo which usually leads to dead ends. We’ve helped to revitalize main streets and neighborhood districts, through a process that focuses on both long-term and short-term planning, with a strong emphasis on local business.
Towns and cities are facing a critical juncture. They have the option to fight back, with the same type of boldness, pride, self-reliance, and elbow grease that the founders of their places undoubtedly exhibited. This will leave an enduring legacy—just like the legacy the town inherited from previous generations.
It is time for plans that are an injection of momentum—short-term actions that tie into long-term plans and strategies. The current planning process is not sustainable. It costs too much money and infrequently results in resilient or endearing places. There is a better model, and it is time to embrace it if we want to create healthier, more vibrant, and more robust communities for our future.
We should not go back to the way things were. Some local governments will try to pursue the same types of habits they pursued before. They may hope that the boost from the latest stimulus package will allow them to return to business as usual, but federal funding never made their places extraordinary, even in the most prosperous and predictable of times. Municipalities can and should use that tool to help recover, but it will only work if they do everything they can to help themselves.
Rome was not built in a day. Communities need visionary plans. But being visionary should not mean making a plan that cannot be started in the immediate future, that ignores existing assets, or that cannot currently be budgeted. Most places have done that before; their exhausted citizens attest to a history of attractive, exciting plans that never came to fruition. They don’t need another plan like that. It will not offer them hope or help their places recover and flourish.
Instead, towns and cities must take what steps are possible, with what they already have. The next steps may include pop-up retail programs to help re-incubate former businesses in vacant storefronts; strategic events to attract visitors into the downtown; or public art projects to turn eyesores into signs of hope for the community. The economic development officials who once focused on tax incentives for out-of-town businesses may need to shift their focus to finding grants, assisting with websites, or giving business advice to local firms. Now more than ever, there is a need to show that the city is coming back to life, one step at a time.
The good news is that this practical, applied approach works, and it achieves what the more costly status quo does not. It helps create enduring places that people love.