Table of Contents

Part 1 A bunch of nobodies: legacy of the big stores, vanishing crowds. Part 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. Part 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. Part 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. Part 5 Pasadena - no bed of roses: inventing a transplant; sweetheart deals; pledging future taxes; protective maneouvres; sharing troubles. Part 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. Part 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. Part 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. Part 9 Open for business: Faneuil Hall - marketing the unusual; Pike Place - preserving the past; town square - making the setting special; Horton plaza - designing fantasies. Part 10 Popular success and critical dismay: fear of commerce; artificial environments; highbrows and lowbrows. Part 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. Part 12 Marketplace contributions: uses of commercialism; taming Times Square and Bryant Park; School for Management; the hiding hand; selling Columbus Circle. Part 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. Part 14 An unfinished renaissance: indicting City Hall; manufacturing myths - New Yrok 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?.

Promotional Information

Frieden and Sagalyn have captured, in an authoritative and impressive way, the most significant developments in American city building over the last 15 years. -- Robert Wood, Henry R. Luce Professor of Democratic Institutions and the Social Order, Wesleyan University An insightful analysis of downtown commercial redevelopment. Frieden and Sagalyn explore the process and effects of commercial revitalization with great wisdom and clarity. -- Daniel P. Moynihan, United States Senator from New York Successful cities have been the cutting edge of all successful societies. Downtown, Inc. is a very good analysis of what we know about what one does and does not do to create successful cities in the United States. -- Lester Thurow, Department of Economics, MIT Bernard Frieden and Lynne Sagalyn have written a most interesting account of the most interesting developments...They describe in this important contribution to urban studies how new mechanism for downtown developments were forged bringing together city governments and private developers, and brought to fruition developments in the 1980's more successful as contributions to urban life and diversity than the projects of earlier years. -- Nathan Glazer

About the Author

Bernard J. Frieden is Class of 1942 Professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and Chairman of the MIT Faculty.

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.

Reviews

Downtown, Inc. is a solid book with plenty of background... [Its] densely detailed case studies celebrate flexibility and innovation on both sides of the increasingly blurry public-private debate.—Harold Henderson, Planning

Downtown, Inc. represents the most insightful commentary on up-to-the-minute urban development that has appeared to date. Moreover, this is a book in which the words 'government' and 'successful' actually appear in the same sentence.—Edward A. Schwartz, New York Times Book Review

Downtown, Inc. is a solid book with plenty of background... [Its] densely detailed case studies celebrate flexibility and innovation on both sides of the increasingly blurry public-private debate.

The authors, professors of urban studies at MIT, present a brief for inner-city revitalization projects such as Boston's Faneuil Hall marketplace, the Horton Place complex in San Diego and retail centers in Seattle and St. Paul. Critics have branded such projects artificial enclaves that turn city residents into tourists and favor corporate interests at the expense of the citizenry. The authors strongly disagree, arguing that downtown retail developments create jobs, promote economic development and reassert middle-class control over crumbling areas. They further contend that, given federal funding cutbacks, cities have no other pragmatic course than to make deals with coalitions of real estate developers and business interests. A book for specialists, the study is full of details on the financing and politics that undergird downtown rebuilding schemes. Photos. (Dec.)