The Mansion at Main Street

A developer in Cleveland has some hot ideas about transforming the city of Cleveland using the latest visions of city planning--new urbanism. It means building things--retail, residence, office--UP instead of out like the suburbs.

I'm in New Jersey right now (south Jersey, that is--a whole different ballgame than north Jersey, which is highly industrialized and intensely crowded) and above is a photo of one piece of such a New Urbanism developoment called Main Street.

Main Street was built up back in the early 80s, with the anchoring street-level retail being extremely high end clothiers and others. With the big crash of '87, most of the retailers turned tail and ran. The street level storefronts are still pretty deserted today, though the rest of the development seems alive and kicking.

Economic development can be such a crapshoot. But the idea of putting people closer to each other and mixing the uses (retail, office, entertainment, residence) is the sound idea on which all great cities were founded.