The Impact of Main Street Revitalization on the Economic Vitality of Small-Town Business Districts

Abstract

The Main Street Program is a popular smaller-scale economic development strategy used to revitalize historic town centers across the rural United States. In this article, a difference-in-differences design using longitudinal business establishment data is implemented to estimate the program’s causal impact on job and establishment growth in downtown retail districts. Using a pooled sample of four Midwest states, the author found no significant effect of Main Street Program adoption on downtown jobs or establishments. However, for each individual state, a substantial degree of structural heterogeneity across states exists. Iowa emerges as a state where the Main Street Program appears to yield its hypothesized economic benefits to the downtown business districts of participating communities. These findings suggest that Main Street Program participation effects are not generalizable across states and that implementation and local context matter.

A Guide to the American Community Survey (ACS) for the Rural Researcher: Unpacking the Conceptual and Technical Aspects of Using Secondary Data for Rural Research☆

“…However, it is not a realistic option for researchers interested in zooming into the downtown district of individual communities. Downtown districts in rural communities, often referred to as Main Street (Drabenstott 2001) or the central business districts (Van Leuven 2022b), carry particular meaning in small towns as they capture the main commercial and civic activity and are generally tied to the historical start of a community (Van Leuven 2022a). Therefore, while Census tracts or block groups may have less uncertainty tied to their estimates and produce better results mathematically , zooming into the Main Street of a small town with Census place data allows me to better capture the vitality of the community center, conceptually .…”

Urban vitality assessment at the neighborhood scale with geo-data: A review toward implementation

“…Many studies have investigated the influence mechanisms (Yang et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2022b) and evaluation techniques (Wu et al, 2018b;Niu et al, 2021) from this perspective. Nevertheless, some studies are dedicated to non-spatial dimensions, including the economic vitality in small-town business districts (Wu et al, 2018b;Van Leuven, 2022); the preservation and development vitality in traditional villages (Liu et al, 2022); and the organizational vitality of the neighborhood, park recreation, and street food (Newman and Burnett, 2013;Zhu et al, 2020;Wang and Vermeulen, 2021).…”

“…However, there are very few studies aimed at improving policy and management that are connected to optimizing vitality practices. At present, the policy optimization research is primarily concerned with the revitalization of small towns, historical districts, and traditional villages (Li et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2022;Van Leuven, 2022), whereas the management optimization research is primarily focused on traffic and facility management issues confronting general neighbourhood (Newman and Burnett, 2013;Zacharias, 2020;Zhu et al, 2020;Wang and Vermeulen, 2021).…”

“…As neighborhood-scale vitality is influenced by urban activities and interactions (Yue et al, 2017), it is typically multi-dimensional and must be promoted from multiple perspectives. The current evaluation focuses primarily on the built environment from a spatial perspective,  Strengthen the predication of the synergistic impact of indicators while non-spatial research is limited to economics, organization, protection, and development (Wang and Vermeulen, 2021;Liu et al, 2022;Van Leuven, 2022) (Figure 4). Studies on the specific dimension of vitality should be increased and they should focus on topics such as public activity vitality, commercial vitality, and vitality under energy consumption constraints, among others.…”

What side of town? How proximity to critical survival factors affects rural business longevity

“…However, studies that control for proximity to place‐making efforts as a determinant of positive business outcomes are limited. For example, Van Leuven (2022a) found a positive causal link between Main Street Program adoption and retail job growth. Further, Stitzel and Rogers (2019) found that proximity impacts were contingent on the type of industry in an analysis of sales in a 5‐mile radius around a new sports arena.…”