Why don’t you take me downtown?

By: J. David Chapman/May 16, 2019

Downtown was always the most vibrant heart of the American city. Every city had one, a pulsing commercial center where you could find banks, businesses, hotels, department stores, and theaters. Downtown was the economic engine that fueled the city.

I am leaving for London Saturday. London defined the urban experience and set expectations in the 19th century, and New York City was the iconic metropolis of the 20th. Both cities began using the term “downtown” to refer specifically to their booming business district. As firms moved in, well-to-do families moved out, eager to escape the hustle and bustle of the center city for quieter districts.

In their heyday, downtowns were the engines of the economy. A busy downtown represented not just a healthy city, but symbolized the vitality of America itself, at a time when our country was becoming an economic and political player on the world stage. Until the end of the 19th century, all of a city’s financial institutions, professional offices, courts, and government agencies were located there. Because residences were built outside of the downtown areas, American public transportation was designed specifically to take people downtown from those residential areas.

By the 20th century, population of downtowns was falling steadily at a time when overall population of cities was rising. People were escaping downtowns, and the rise of suburbia epitomized the new American dream. By the 1920s, the role of downtown had changed and the flight to the suburbs had transformed the landscape of urban America into what we called the central business district. The proliferation of roads and automobiles had now created new business districts on the fringes of cities.

By 1950, it seemed as if the most decentralized metropolis in the world, Los Angeles, was now the model for the future. The decline of the central city, or downtown, was a troubling reality in the late 20th century to urban life around the world. In the 1970s and ‘80s, British cities appeared to be following the U.S. example. London’s population had been 8.5 million in the 1940s, but had dropped as low as 6.7 million by 1986.

My next column will be from London as we research and report on exactly what happened after this exodus from one of the world’s greatest cities.

J. David Chapman is an associate professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).