Down Town re-vitalization projects use to be for Cities, but now downtown suburbs are getting a face lift too. And with so many people living in the suburbs often down towns are now a traffic mess; indeed cars are clogging town areas.

Many Downtown Beautification Projects, revitalization in suburbia have gone to single lanes, with angled parking and open eating areas, big sidewalk walkways and tilt up construction (quick up) buildings with nice facades, people living over businesses, parking in rear too or paid to park. But throw in more daytime people and you fill up all the Starbucks and all the parking and all the streets. Of course the cities have this problem too, both large cities and medium size cities like let's say Portland, ME.

If you go to Urban Planet.com you will see people talk about the problems with Town Centers when people will not ditch their cars. Some say it is more efficient to have people in one place (City) in order to enjoy economies of scale, true enough but people live how they want to live and you cannot force them into a master designed city.

They want to live in the "Subs" but in doing so they have more duplication of government services with each new city boundary and that costs more; meaning higher costs of living, higher taxes and more people using credit cards to prop up life style to maintain quality of life. I think all these topics are related. And yes, the cluster traffic messes in town center areas are problematic. Did you see what they did on Winslow Way in Boston?

Now I want to tell you about the cost of traffic on service businesses and remember they now make up 35%-45% as Manufacturing went from 35% to 17% to 10% to 9% OMG, help! It costs small business owners dearly as their units burn up $20.00 a day in fuel and it slams the schedule between stops with labor costs while stuck in traffic. It is a huge burden, we pass that cost on.

Standard of living issues for our customers - higher prices. The increased labor, raises costs, then fewer people want services at a certain price point the whole thing goes hyperbolic on you. For instance let's take a mobile car wash and at $25.00 for a car wash and no one wants it, keep it at $10.00 to $15.00 everyone wants one, thus economies of scale prevail and everyone wins, consumer and high profiting service business.

One could go on for hours on this subject if you want I have lots of stuff on the subject. I just think people are missing the point with city planning sometimes and not looking ahead, could I do better? Absolutely and someone very smart needs to do a huge research study on this so everyone gets it and all those in charge see the whole picture. Something to contemplate in 2008.

Downtown Revitalization Projects Discussed

Someone should write a book on Downtown Revitalization to help cities and city planners upgrade their cities. Urban flight leads to Urban plight. The sprawling suburbs have been attractive to the middle class and some city down town areas have been left in the dust.

Indeed someone should write an eBook on this and put it online to help the world and so I have started. I must have some 45 pages on Down Town revitalization projects already written and 100s of pages of notes saved up.

You see having traveled around the country I have seen the good, bad and ugly as well as the impossible transformation of cities, which for all intent and purposes were completely beyond help. Some how through "shear will" they pulled it off. You can do the same thing in your city, I know, I have seen it.

There is a cool website called "UrbanPlanet.com" where people go to post things and discuss how to upgrade city downtown districts and share information on what works and why. Everyone wants their city downtown area to be great, you are not alone and you can do something about it.

What can be done? Well I have seen revitalization projects with Water Features, Board Walks, River Walks, Brick Cities built from old factories and many other strategies that were employed to bring people in a city town open-air atmosphere.

Actually I am writing several Inter-related books which will involve travel and observations, economics, politics, etc. because sometimes I just wish people could see what I have seen and then they would know exactly what to do.