Downtown Dayton: Because a City’s Cool Factor Matters

42,000 employees. 20,000 residents. 40,000 students.
More than 7 million visitors every year.
This is Greater Downtown Dayton.

It’s a simple equation. A healthy downtown = a prosperous region.

That’s because, today, downtowns are filling a special niche: to be places where people have an active, convenient lifestyle. Creating that place is integral to attracting investment, as well as retaining and creating jobs because more businesses are locating and expanding where people want to be — and more of them want to be in vibrant, diverse cities where they can live, work, play and learn within walkable distances.

Greater Downtown is the ideal location for such a place.

And the Greater Downtown Dayton Plan is helping it become just that.

This area already has much of what’s in demand today. It has big city advantages and small town conveniences. Still, like most urban areas, Greater Downtown faces challenges. The strategies in the Greater Downtown Dayton Plan address those by helping Dayton build on its strengths.

The Plan represents a new vision for Dayton’s center city that focuses on strengthening connections and creating a downtown attractive to investors, businesses, employees, residents, students and visitors. This vision focuses on the immense potential of Greater Downtown to become the turbine for Dayton’s regional economy.

Indeed, the future belongs to those regions taking urban revitalization seriously. Those are the regions that are and will continue to attract high-value jobs, young professionals and the businesses and institutions that want to employ them. To accept anything less for Greater Downtown would be selling Dayton’s legacy of innovation — and our community — short.

But don’t just take our word for it: Visit the links below to read what others are saying about the critical role urban revitalization increasingly has on a region’s economic prosperity and the national trend of people turning back their cities’ urban cores and downtowns.

• “Downtowns: What’s Behind America’s Most Surprising Real Estate Boom?”
• “Revitalization Outlook: What Strategies Can Help Make Urban Cores More Vibrant?”
• “Urban Renewal? Big US Cities Showing Strong Growth”
• “Urban Renewal? Census Figures Soaring”
• “Case Studies on Urban Revitalization”