When did “downtown” hit its nadir?

[coatimundi]

Tucson's bottom was the late 80's and early 90's. The stores that were going to closed had all closed by then, and the nightclubs that came later in the decade had not yet showed up. So it was mostly just homeless people and empty storefronts. Kind of a terrifying place at night, even into the early 2000's.

Houston had a hard bottom in the late 80's, after the oil crash. My dad has a story about going to a convention there about that time, then trying to walk to a restaurant for dinner. The police picked him up and returned him to his hotel, warning him not to try walking again. But that area was always so much worse than the rest of Downtown. During the early 2000's, there was a bit of renaissance, with a really great arts and music scene emerging down there, but it never seemed to totally catch on. It's still mostly just offices and it's a dead zone in the evenings.

I've only been visiting Fresno for a couple of years, but it seems like it's only very recently started to come out of its hole. There are a few restaurants now that stay open evenings and weekends, and I think the brewery and minor league baseball stadium have helped a lot.

But I have been visiting Albuquerque each year for a few years now, and their Downtown area seems to have a lot of ups and downs, with it currently on somewhat of a downward trend. I think it was about 2002 they opened a cineplex, but much of the activity is now concentrated right around that cineplex. The tourist area (Old Town) is far enough away that mostly no one makes it Downtown.

[golden eagle]

Downtown Jackson doesn't have the best downtown in the world, but it's not quite as dead as it used to be. There was a time where after 6pm, you could hear a pin drop. While there is still a long way to go, a convention center and a formerly abandoned hotel opened in 2009 that has sparked a little bit of activity, along with the recently renovated Thalia Mara Hall, which has brought Broadway shows and musical acts like Elton John and Jill Scott. A new Westin hotel and two new museums will open late next year, which will bring tons of new visitors to downtown.

[empirestate]

There are some downtowns–I noticed this about Tulsa–that are quite busy during the lunch hour, and then again after 6pm, but absolutely dead from about 2 to 5 in the afternoon.

[kkt]

^^^^ I like how a drop of 12 points on the Dow was a big deal...oh how things change. 

Yeah.  That headline was Oct. 29, 1975.  The Dow's close Oct. 28 was 851, close on Oct. 29 was 838.  Big percentage change.

[kkt]

Downtown's nadir, I think, was around 1965-1975.  By the late 1970s, at least there was more acceptance that downtowns had some advantages and shouldn't disappear completely.

But the decline of the downtown started slowly, a lot earlier than people have posted so far.  I'd peg it to the 1890s with the beginnings of railroad commuting suburbs.

[empirestate]

But the decline of the downtown started slowly, a lot earlier than people have posted so far.  I'd peg it to the 1890s with the beginnings of railroad commuting suburbs.

It depends on the particular city, of course. To be sure, escaping the congested inner parts of a city in search of more space has been a thing as long as transport and industry have.

That being said, are there examples of cities where the downtown never showed any significant decline, but instead always existed in a relatively stable, prosperous state?

[The Nature Boy]

But the decline of the downtown started slowly, a lot earlier than people have posted so far.  I'd peg it to the 1890s with the beginnings of railroad commuting suburbs.

It depends on the particular city, of course. To be sure, escaping the congested inner parts of a city in search of more space has been a thing as long as transport and industry have.

The interesting question is whether or not millennials will continue this trend. Inner cities are increasingly getting younger and more affluent but I have to wonder if we'll see another mass exodus from the inner city as millennials have children and move to the suburbs, as our parents did.

[sparker]

Downtown San Jose is something of a mixed bag -- in some respects leaning toward the positive, but counterbalanced with endemic problems.  On one hand, having SJSU right downtown keeps the pedestrian traffic going, making restaurants and bars viable enterprises in the area; also helping is the "Shark Tank" in the west part of downtown, a block away from the rail depot (the Caltrain commuter service to SF, Amtrak (the south end of the Capitol service to Sacramento), plus the ACE commuter service to Stockton.  The "Tank" is the home of the (NHL) San Jose Sharks, the city's sole major pro team.  Light rail wends its way through downtown as well, but with lower usage that would be expected (I'll probably talk about that in the Transit section at some later time).

However, offsetting that are safety issues; San Jose has a police force of just over 900 for a city of 975,000 -- and many SJ cops leave after a few years for better-paying jobs in the surrounding suburbs (Sunnyvale, Cupertino, and Morgan Hill have been cited as destinations for this diaspora); the city has difficulty replenishing its force.  Most reported criminal activity seems to occur within a ring outside the central core, but it's enough to discourage a lot of pedestrian traffic (except for "safety-in-numbers" groups) in the entire area.  Parking is a perpetual issue; there's limited on-street parking (deliberate and abetted by high meter rates) but not augmented, as in other cities, by private parking facilities to any extent beyond those attached to hotels, office complexes, and the convention center a few blocks south of downtown. 

The general developmental policy of the city has definitely been to favor renewal -- and reconstruction where deemed necessary -- of the core downtown area, but there has always been a disconnect regarding access to the area.  Light rail is limited to a single north-south line, with a branch diverging near the rail station that serves the depot before heading to the suburb of Campbell to the southwest -- but beyond that, little has been done to expedite traffic in & out of the central core save the completion of the CA 87 freeway skirting the west side.  Just north of the core is the type of "mixed facility" development favored by urbanists -- densely developed condos with service businesses (lots of Starbucks and donut shops!) on the ground floor.  These were constructed in the late '90's and early '00's, several years after the light rail line opened.  Ironically, these units were and are priced out of the reach of most locals -- and they appear not to have attracted the hordes of coders and other well-paid IT and electronics professionals that were originally expected to line up to purchase or lease the downtown-adjacent units.  Instead, many have been purchased by larger regional employers (Oracle, Cisco, etc.) to house new employees until such time as those folks, with corporate "tenure", move into more permanent individualized housing. 

Thus downtown ends up depending upon a mixture of SJSU students and less-than-permanent locals for its commercial viability -- hardly a stable cocktail!  Add to that the folks who come in for Sharks games or other scheduled activities, and you have a downtown core with little in the way of consistent roots.  It's a place to go if there's something specific of interest there -- but once that's out of the way, very few linger within, much less explore, downtown.  The businesses that cater specifically to SJSU students do reasonably well, as do restaurants and bars that siphon sports fans a block or two from the arena.  Otherwise, downtown San Jose is just a place rather than either a favored destination or a preferred residential area.

In retrospect, I'd say downtown SJ's nadir came in the late '80's -- at that time, nobody really wanted to go there unless they had to for business or something specific to the area.  The light rail (ca. 1991), for all its shortcomings, did provide a "kickstart" for a revival, but it never reached fever pitch by any means.  It's better than it was, but considering the region's wealth and residents, a promise as of yet unfulfilled.