Urban Scale published a report written by John Karras, Feb. 5, 2014, headlined “12 Strategies That Will Transform Your City’s Downtown.” Karras’ report gave these suggestions:

1. Turn one-way streets into two-way streets.

2. Establish a regularly occurring public event that showcases downtown merchants, music and food.

3. Create more land for development (landfill into a body of water, remove land from a floodplain, take back land from a freeway, etc).

4. Make under-utilized public land available for private sector development.

5. Consolidate regional economic development partner organizations into a single downtown location.

6. Create a permanent public market.

7. Open a downtown satellite campus of a local university.

8. Build a streetcar line connecting your downtown to an adjacent urban neighborhood.

9. Create an awesome downtown playground to make your downtown more kid-friendly and family-friendly.

10. Create a branded downtown entertainment district.

11. Establish maximum parking standards for new downtown developments, or at least remove minimum parking requirements for new buildings.

12. Set up a downtown bike share program.

The full report can be found at: http://bit.ly/1jAF8bS