The Importance of Downtowns

Christopher Leinberger will speak on why downtown Cleveland matters to Northeast Ohio [1] Posted by slitt [at] plaind [dot] com April 24, 2008

"Leinberger [2] will be the featured speaker at the 2008 Historic Downtown Cleveland Luncheon Forum, organized by the Historic Gateway Neighborhood [3], the Cleveland Theater District [4] and the Historic Warehouse District [5].

Leinberger's talk is entitled "Why the Downtown Turnaround is Essential to Metro Cleveland's Future."

Currently a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Leinberger also directs the Graduate Real Estate Development Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor."

Since many of us cannot afford the time or the ticket price, and because the presenters seem to be holding out on telling us where the thing will be held, you may be interested in the message as he relates it to downtown Sacremento in this streaming video [6].

Litt also writes, "Even though many Clevelanders believe this, it always helps to hear the message delivered anew by an expert from somewhere else." I agree that Clevelanders need to hear from outsiders who help to cement what many bright minds have been saying here for years (to Gloria's point [7] - we can't hear ourselves here). Me? I'm holding out for James Howard Kunstler, who bypasses "Suburban Nation" and uses the term "Clusterfuck Nation" calling the suburbs the "national automobile slums". At least this won't be like Robert Bruegmann, who stood before an audience of educated and concerned Clevelanders at Baker Nord and told us that sprawl was a natural and OK thing and we should just enjoy it. What a farce! The people I spoke with after that lecture said they didn’t have the strength, the interest or the time to take this guy to the mat for delivering such a message to a city that so desperately needs to recognize and nourish its core. Hopefully Leinberger's message will be heard. Now acted upon... well that's more complicated.

We host Donovan Rypkema [8] speaking on the economic, placemaking, environmental and workforce development benefits of historic preservation and then the same organization is blindsided about razing a huge historic building, (and our state legislators put a hold on historic tax credits), but, hey... sometimes we need to hear these things again and again before they sink in. It's good that Leinberger will address the well to do lunch crowd.

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