4 Establish roles of the organizer.
5 Define levels of involvement.
6 Define the planner’s role.
7 Clarify the role of the community.
8 Identify techniques of involvement.
9 Document the strategy.
10 Establish a clear yet flexible time-frame.The process of commercial district overhaul for larger service
centres needs to be appreciated for what it is; a rearguard com-
mercially motivated activity to reclaim middle-income customers
now flocking to shopping malls and commercial strips in search
of ‘shopping convenience’ and ‘shopping security’ in the case of
malls for ‘shopping as entertainment’. A significant attraction of
strips and malls is that the household automobile can be safely
parked adjacent to a shop or within or under a mall. These, being well lit and
muzaked, exude secureness and cleanliness and replicate most of the shopping
opportunities of ‘mainstreet’ under one roof.
The central feature of an effective mainstreet revitalization programme involves
an accommodation of the motor car, coupled, perversely, with traffic calming and
secure off-street parking. In what might be considered the most challenging shop-
ping mainstreet circumstance, flanking a typical 30 to 40 metre wide commercial
easement, the former street space becomes
a wide trench flanked by low-rise build-
ings. This becomes difficult to enliven and
revitalize because it is aesthetically inco-
herent and lost in commercial space – offer-
ing counter inducements to go by car from
‘big box’ to ‘big box’ along a shopping
strip, or to park and shop in the security of
a mall. Pedestrianization of the typical
mainstreet kind attains functional validity
when the traffic lane is narrowed, the pave-
ments widened, and street trees planted.
Mainstreets are challenging to ‘design’ into life, especially so for those with a
wider thoroughfare, although much can be achieved with the careful placement
of kiosks, tree planting, bollard advertising and surface reconfiguration when this
can be afforded. David Sucher’s City Comforts(1995) illustrates the good manners
and detailed components which induce a sense of belonging, security, peaceabil-
ity, and orderliness in the shopping area context.The main alternative to mainstreet treatment and central business district over-
haul is the attraction of consumers to shopping malls and commercial strips. The
socio-scientific context for both malls and strips, but particularly the latter,
involves consideration of the shopping threshold range – the distance average
travellers are prepared to travel to shop for high-order goods supplied at ‘centres’,254 PracticeThese are the headings
for a ‘four point
approach’ given in the US
publicationMainStreet
Success Stories(Suzanne
Dane 1997: 3–9):
Organization, Promotion,
Design, and Economic
Restructuring.
There are also ‘eight
guiding principles’:
Comprehensiveness,
Incrementalism, Selfhelp,
Partnerships, Assets,
Quality, Attitudinal
Change, Implementation.Warkworth