Redesigning Urban Centers: Adapting to Changing Real Estate Markets describes how well-managed places which offer clean, safe, and attractively designed streets and public spaces, along with reinvented zoning, are drawing real estate investors and developers to reimagined legacy downtowns, innovation districts, edge cities becoming real cities, suburban shopping streets turning into mixed-use centers, urban districts near airports, and bypassed downtowns relying on government support. Case studies from the Philadelphia metropolitan region, plus examples from across the U.S., demonstrate how designs which integrate offices, housing, shopping, hotels, and entertainment, along with cultural and other attractions, transform places where people have to be into places where people want to be.

This book will interest leaders of business improvement districts and Main Street organizations, planning officials, urban design practitioners, and instructors and students of planning, economic development, and urban design.