Main & Main: At the Intersection of Imperative and Opportunity (in person & virtual)

Join the Future of Small Cities Institute for The Third Annual FoSCI Winter Dialogue featuring renowned urbanist and dynamic speaker DAVID DIXON, who will lay out the future of North America’s communities for the next two decades, an era of unprecedented imperative and opportunity. Mr. Dixon says one of the keys to inclusive development is creating and enhancing mixed-use, walkable places. Welcome to the new Main Street! nt

Mr. Dixon will discuss how growing our local—and regional—economies starts with attracting and retaining “talent”, the educated and skilled workforce which in turn attracts and retains jobs and investment. This talent—whether formally educated at a major university or brought into the workforce and provided marketable skills by local nonprofits—seeks mixed-use environments to live and work. Jobs and investment follow. At the same time, housing represents two-thirds of our real estate economy and dramatic demographic changes will increasingly support the strongest demand for housing in mixed-used, walkable places since at least World War II. These are equal opportunity trends. Even in regions with slow or no population growth, demographic churn supports Main Street investment and a global talent shortage means jobs and investment will follow. How do communities unlock their opportunity to meet this imperative? Start planning now and start with Main Street.

DAVID DIXON is a Vice President and Urban Places Fellow at Stantec. Residential Architecture Magazine named David to their Hall of Fame as “the person we call to ask about cities.” In recent years he’s led planning in post-Katrina New Orleans, transformed strip malls into new suburban downtowns, and initiated a broad reappraisal of the role of density in building more livable, resilient, and equitable communities. A sought-after expert in urban planning and design, David is well known for helping create new, mixed-use urban districts (in both cities and suburbs) and the planning, revitalization, and redevelopment of downtowns. His current and recent work focuses on urban transformations, including the reemergence of the long-depressed East Franklinton neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, as an arts/innovation district; creation of a master plan for the nine-million-square-foot, mixed-use Water Street District adjacent to downtown Tampa; and market-driven redevelopment of a public housing site into One Charlestown—a 3,200-unit, mixed-income neighborhood with no displacement in one of Boston’s most historic neighborhoods. David’s impact hasn’t gone unnoticed—he’s won dozens of awards from the likes of the American Institute of Architects, the American Planning Association, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and the International Downtown Association. A Fellow of the AIA, David was honored with their Thomas Jefferson Medal for “a lifetime of creating livable neighborhoods, vibrant civic spaces, and vital downtowns.”