Monday, December 7, 2015

Authors' Blog: The Homegrown Downtown: Redevelopment in Asheville, NC

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

*****

Elizabeth Strom
http://spa.usf.edu/faculty/estrom/

Robert J. Kerstein
https://www.ut.edu/RobertKerstein/


You visit Asheville, NC, perhaps, for the lovely fall foliage along the Blue Ridge Parkway, or because you’ve read about North Carolina’s top tourist attraction, the Biltmore Estate.  But you quickly find that this city of 85,000 also has a growing arts district and a dynamic downtown whose galleries, restaurants and microbreweries have earned praise as a “best beer city”, “great food destination,” and even “coolest city”.  U.S. cities in all regions and of all sizes have been seeking ways to turn moribund downtowns into economically vibrant and culturally rich destinations; do Asheville’s political and economic leaders have the “secret sauce”?