Building Strong Towns, One Storefront At A Time

Jaime J. Izurieta. Originally published in Strong Towns on 5 February 2020. Link

Cities become great when they have a solid foundation. A sturdy network with many nodes well-connected will be able to sustain many of the challenges to come, from worldwide pandemics to bankruptcy. Putting public space revitalization at the center of economic development strategies creates the conditions for organic growth from the grassroots and the natural strengthening of the network.

Good public spaces add shared value, build trust and make neighborhoods, towns and cities more prosperous and happy from the ground up. Just imagine how wide the reach of an economic development strategy would be if it relied on the sum of the efforts of each one of the businesses in an area.

Small businesses play a crucial role in economic revitalization, job creation and prosperity. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, they account for 11.8 million (64% of the total 18.5 million) new jobs created from 1993 to 2011 and occupy between 30% and 50% of all commercial space in the nation. 

The style, size and scale of retail are shifting away from the mall and chain department store models, and towards locally sourced, experiential, smaller scale operations that are more sustainable, generate more tax revenue per acre, and create more jobs per square foot than suburban stores with large footprints.

There is a new kind of retail culture in which the business model is not the sale of products but the stewardship of values. Business owners become key parts of a supply chain that is vested in its urban context. In consequence, the design of their stores tends to be very generous with the sidewalk and street. They will instinctively use any props available to contribute to build civic values and transform their storefronts into community hubs. 

Business owners who place a bet on the urbane quality of the little stretch of public space in their frontage, supporting their communities and building strong relationships within them, are the “Storefront Placemakers.” And whether or not they know it, they are part of a movement.

Storefront Placemakers are business owners who treat their storefronts as public space. They improve the city around them by making their blocks more inclusive, compassionate and open. A bench, a parklet, an awning or an easel with written wit, when poured onto a sidewalk will change the quality and mood of the walk. Oftentimes not vested in wide economic development strategies, these businesses are nevertheless allies in the urban revitalization effort. A rather untapped resource, in my opinion.

By building public spaces in their frontages, Storefront Placemakers connect neighborhoods and give people places to gather. They strengthen communities and increase resiliency. They spread a message of compassion, generosity and togetherness. This is what good public space can do and a network of great places multiplies the success of that process.

The future of urbanism is in the design of unique experiences. Successful creators—from huge amusement parks to humble neighborhood bodegas—imagine experiences that invite the user to navigate their story and get emotionally attached. When that happens in a city or town at street level, it’s magic.

Just imagine the power of thousands of small businesses in a city transforming the public space in front of their store. Were local governments to harness that potential they could have a massive positive impact on many of the critical issues of city-building.

Each individual solution that is built around good storytelling will make the city exciting and boost the local economy. The savvy planner would match the sum of individual efforts by coordinating how each story fits in the context of a citywide strategy.

Good urbanism creates a narrative. It sets the backdrop for millions of stories that happen daily in a city. A grassroots practice that taps into the collective intelligence and builds up the strength of communities as it reaches its goals, then each additional contribution to the quality of public space is like a grain of sand. Each part joins the next and together they are a beach, each grain indistinguishable from the rest but equally as important. 

Business owners with their street-facing storefronts have the power of individual grains of sand. Their contribution to the quality of the cities where they operate could be tremendous because each new gesture multiplies exponentially all the previous ones. And that is how cities are built, one storefront at a time.