Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

The Heart of the City

Creating Vibrant Downtowns for a New Century

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Alexander Garvin

    1. c/o Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Grand Central Post Office, New York, USA

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Written by an award-winning and internationally recognized expert on cities

  • Recommends actions that will help any downtown thrive, with examples from many different American cities

  • Author brings an insider perspective to successful projects profiled in the book

  • Focus on downtowns, rather than entire metropolitan areas, is unique

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XIV
    Download chapter PDF

  2. What Is Downtown?

    • Alexander Garvin
    Pages 1-17

  3. Where Is Downtown?

    • Alexander Garvin
    Pages 19-42

  4. How and Why Downtown America Is Changing

    • Alexander Garvin
    Pages 43-74

  5. People Who Are Changing Downtown

    • Alexander Garvin
    Pages 75-93

  6. Organizations That Are Changing Downtown

    • Alexander Garvin
    Pages 95-129

  7. Lessons for Any Downtown

    • Alexander Garvin
    Pages 131-162

  8. Emerging 21st-Century Downtowns

    • Alexander Garvin
    Pages 163-198

  9. Creating Vibrant Downtowns for a New Generation

    • Alexander Garvin
    Pages 199-218

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 219-248
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles.

In The Heart of the City, distinguished urban planner Alexander Garvin shares lessons on how to plan for a mix of housing, businesses, and attractions; enhance the public realm; improve mobility; and successfully manage downtown services. Garvin opens the book with diagnoses of downtowns across the United States, including the people, businesses, institutions, and public agencies implementing changes. In a review of prescriptions and treatments for any downtown, Garvin shares brief accounts—of both successes and failures—of what individuals with very different objectives have done to change their downtowns. The final chapters look at what is possible for downtowns in the future, closing with suggested national, state, and local legislation to create standard downtown business improvement districts to better manage downtowns.
This book will help public officials, civic organizations, downtown business property owners, and people who care about cities learn from successful recent actions in downtowns across the country, and expand opportunities facing their downtown. Garvin provides recommendations for continuing actions to help any downtown thrive, ensuring a prosperous and thrilling future for the 21st-century American city.

Authors and Affiliations

  • c/o Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Grand Central Post Office, New York, USA

    Alexander Garvin

About the author

Alexander Garvin has combined a career in urban planning and real estate with teaching, architecture, and public service. He is currently President and CEO of AGA Public Realm Strategists, Inc., a planning and design firm in New York City that is responsible for the initial master plans for the Atlanta BeltLine, Tessera (a 700-acre new community outside Austin), and Hinton Park in Collierville, Tennessee. Between 1996 and 2005 he was managing director for planning at NYC2012, the committee to bring the Summer Olympics to New York in 2012. During 2002-2003, he was Vice President for Planning, Design and Development of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. During the last 49 years he has held prominent positions in five New York City administrations, including Deputy Commissioner of Housing and City Planning Commissioner.
Garvin is Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning and Management at Yale University, where he has taught a wide range of subjects including “Introduction to the Study of the City,” which for more than 52 years has remained one of the most popular courses in Yale College.  In addition, he teaches three courses in the School of Architecture, including: “An Introduction to Planning & Real Estate Development,” “Residential Design, Development, and Management,” and “Intermediate Planning & Development.”

Garvin is on the board of directors of the Forum for Urban Design and the Citizens Housing and Planning Council. Between 1996 and 2004, he was a fellow of the Urban Land Institute for whom he has organized and taught workshops on basic real estate development, the residential development process, and the role of design in real estate. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Skyscraper Museum, the Ed Bacon Foundation, and the Society of American City and Regional Planning History, as well as the National Advisory Council of the Trust for Public Land.
Garvin is the author of the book The American City: What Works, What Doesn't, published by McGraw-Hill and winner of the 1996 American Institute of Architects book award in urbanism. (The substantially revised, updated, expanded, now full color 3rd edition was released during in 2013). He also is the author of The Planning Game: Lessons from Great Cities, published by W. W. Norton in 2013; Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities, published by W. W. Norton in 2010; Parks, Recreation, and Open Space: A 21st Century Agenda, published in 2001 by the American Planning Association; and one of the principal authors of Urban Parks and Open Space, published in 1997 jointly by the Trust for Public Land and the Urban Land Institute.
Garvin earned his B.A., M.Arch, and M.U.S. from Yale University.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation