Having a Longer View on Downtown Living

Abstract

Steven Levin's painting Clouds depicts the interior of a studio apartment in the warehouse district of Minneapolis. The downtown building, which formerly housed a John Deere factory, illustrates one type of downtown housing discussed in Eugenie Birch's Longer View article. Levin lives and works in Minneapolis and has exhibited widely, including with the Plein Air Painters of America, the Salmagundi Club in New York City, and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London. Thanks to the Gandy Gallery (http://www.gandygallery.com/) for their help in securing use of this image. Many American cities are experiencing a rise in the number of residents in their downtowns. This phenomenon has deep roots but is extremely fragile. Six approaches to developing downtown housing dominate the arrangements. The public and private sectors have cooperated in many ways to attract this type of investment. Downtown housing, however, is only one part of the larger puzzle of urban revitalization and metropolitan growth. Many questions regarding the nature of downtown land uses, including the relationship between housing and employment, remain. This article presents statistical evidence regarding downtown housing for 45 cities and outlines the approaches many have employed to capture these housing units. It also demonstrates the difficulty of defining a city's downtown.