Downtown revitalization

This CIRD-created document tracks potential funding opportunities and resources for various rural-related community design challenges. It will be updated periodically as new resources are identified.

Source: MASS Design Group. The design of our spaces has the power to hurt us or to keep us safe. At MASS Design Group, we have spent the last ten years building new spaces and retrofitting existing buildings to promote infection control, and to support our partners in providing the best patient care possible.

Source: Urban Design Forum and Van Allen Institute. This site has numerous resources and ideas to help neighborhoods rebound after the COVID-19 crisis, directly from urban design experts.

Tourism provides communities with numerous benefits including, new jobs, an expanded tax base, improved facilities, and a new market for local products. However, tourism can also exacerbate crowding, traffic congestion, and haphazard development if not planned for correctly. This resource article provides tactics needed to maximize the benefits of tourism, while minimizing the burdens.

Economically resilient towns, cities, and regions adapt to changing conditions and even reinvent their economic bases if necessary. This resource features case studies from seven distinct communities and the strategies they employed to re-energize their economies.

This document produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2012 provides policy options that can help rural communities strengthen their economies while preserving rural character. These policies can help rural communities ensure that their development is fiscally sound, environmentally responsible, and socially equitable.

The guide provides clear examples of how to interpret and apply design flexibility to improve bicycling and walking conditions and presents compelling photographs, visual illustrations and technical diagrams to communicate design issues and solutions in a smaller scale setting.

The Coorinator's Manual was created by the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™ to guide the coordinator of a CIRD workshop through all components of workshop preparation, but it can also be used for producing other community workshops. The manual walks the reader through planning a workshop, and includes exercises for setting goals, and creating plans for design, communications, and implementation.

Is your town or community interested in a short-term project to improve public space? Check out this toolkit, the Tactical Urbanists' Guide to Materials and Design from the Street Plans Collective. This resource is great if you have ideas for 1-7 day “demonstration” projects such as pop-up bike lanes, traffic safety upgrades, or flexible and visible parks projects.

The knowledge and experiences of community members are valuable resources for your local design projects! Learn how to identify priorities, collect community data to support your case, and create materials that advocate for your project using this guidebook by bcWORKSHOP.

Empty buildings and vacant lots are spaces of opportunity! The following guidebook by bcWORKSHOP takes you through the steps building a network of stakeholders for a community space, envisioning what that empty space could become, and making those plans happen.

Sometimes all your need for community togetherness is tape and some wood! Better Block has compiled a few low-cost, high-impact "recipes" for public space activation from temporary bike lanes and parklets to a garden plaza.

How can rural main streets and downtown businesses bounce back from something as sudden and impactful as the coronavirus? The National Main Street Center put together this guide of tips and resources for local businesses to put together their own plan for recovery.

Amid unprecedented change due to COVID-19, retailers must get the "Back to Brick and Mortar" protocol right as public health and their business success ultimately depend on it. Recommended for Main Street projects in rural towns.