By now you shoujld know how much I love Heather Arnold from Streetsense. Now I will introduce you to her colleague James McCandless.  I found this video on Youtube of a presentation they gave last year on their Vibrant Streets Toolkit. There is a lot of important information here on attracting retail to neighborhoods. I'm sharing it here so that we can become empowered and educated stakeholders. Have you ever wondered how do retailers decide where they are going to open a new store?
Published on Feb 22, 2013
The Vibrant Streets Toolkit is the result of a study completed for the District of Columbia Office of Planning that identified measurable components of existing vibrant retail streets and determined how essential pieces of these places could be nurtured in D.C.'s neighborhoods. Streetsense created an eight-step process that a neighborhood could follow to create a successful retail street, no matter its population, ethnic composition, location, income, or budget. Finding success in D.C., Streetsense expanded the toolkit and created Vibrant Streets™ for national audiences. [Bethesda, MD]

Speakers: Heather Arnold, Director of Research and Analysis; and James McCandless, Director of Retail; Streetsense
http://streetsense.com

Crafting Corridors: Reinventing the Urban Street was presented by Next City on February 16, 2013 at the Philadelphia Center for Architecture. Each speaker had just ten minutes to pitch their approach to transforming downtown streets into vibrant, liveable corridors. Next City is a national online magazine about improving cities. We update our site daily with investigative features, thoughtful essays, and interviews from the front lines of urban change and innovation.

Join the conversation: http://nextcity.org

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