About the Value of Downtowns Study

Building on IDA’s unique industry-wide perspective and expertise, this study quantifies the value of U.S. downtowns and center cities across more than 150 metrics organized under five core value principles, with a focus on how downtowns contribute to the city and region around them. The Value of U.S. Downtowns and Center Cities study is a partnership between IDA and local urban place management organization (UPMO). UPMOs have invaluable insights into the areas they manage and have the relationships that help them unlock essential data sources for this study.

The study aims to emphasize the importance of downtown, to demonstrate its unique return on investment, to inform future decision making, and to increase support from local decision makers. The primary project goals are to:

Provide a common set of metrics to communicate the value of downtown.

Expand the range of arguments UPMOs can make to their stakeholders using publicly available data.

IDA began this research in 2017, working with Stantec’s Urban Places group and the first cohort of 13 UPMOs to develop a methodology for compiling and evaluating data from those 13 downtowns. In 2021, our analysis has expanded to include 43 downtowns and center cities across the U.S.

The analysis focuses on how downtown provides value in the five organizing principles of economy, inclusion, vibrancy, identity, and resilience. IDA and our UPMO partners work together to collect hundreds of individual data points, including historic and current data, and three geographic levels (study area, city, and MSA/county). In addition, for employment data we collect three different jobs totals (primary, all jobs, and all private) for all years between 2002 and 2017 to show more nuanced employment trends over time. In total, we utilize more than 8,400 individual pieces of data for each participating downtown, and our downtown database now contains around 310,000 datapoints. The demographic and jobs data included in the study predates the COVID-19 pandemic, but some real estate, tax and assessment data include 2020 and 2021 figures.