Downtown Needs to Change to Survive

I see how hopeless downtown Louisville is. On some days and weekends it can be okay but the issue is that nobody lives there so it's mostly empty unless people drive in, which is sporadic.

We built a huge park on the river downtown that is pretty much empty. They are completing another $30M section of it closer to downtown. Also empty. These are beautiful spaces but there are no people living around them to walk to them and enjoy them.

We have the walking bridge over to New Albany which is also wonderful and gets some traffic on the weekend. At least the Indiana side has people living there along with bars and restaurants. There's very little on the Kentucky side.

We lived downtown pre-COVID and loved it. But after everything closed we moved out. I think there could be a way to revitalize it but there would need to be a plan and I've never seen or heard about one.

The soccer stadium is excellent and a draw when games are in town. But when they are not its tumbleweeds.

Time to go back and re-read some Chris Alexander.

I see it in every city that I travel to and it's clear there has been a shift.

One thing that - I'm curious to get others input on - I wonder if this is a bigger shift than it appears.

The Information Age that brought the best and the brightest from small towns to the city and ultimately to just a handful of cities, seems to be reversing itself.