Revitalizing Urban Main Streets: Mission Hill & Egleston Square, Boston

Revitalizing Urban Main Streets focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers three broad areas:

1. an overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
2. the physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives; and
3. the policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization.

The course has dual goals: to explore the integration of economic and physical development interventions in ways that reinforce commercial district revitalization efforts, and to apply this knowledge through the development of a formal neighborhood commercial revitalization plan for a client business district.