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Five Downtown Strategies: Policy Discourse And Downtown Planning Since 1945, Carl Abbott

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Downtown planning since World War II has been based on constantly changing assumptions about the nature of central business districts. From 1945 to 1955, downtown was seen as the city's unitary center, and the focus of planning activity was the improvement of downtown access and circulation. Between 1955 and 1965, downtown became a declining activity center and failing real estate market; planners and business groups fought decline and competition from the suburbs through programs like urban renewal. In the decade after 1965, a reaction against urban renewal led to a new conception of downtown as a set of distinct functional …