In some respects, “downtown” is a uniquely American invention—considered by die-hard urbanites to be as much a state of mind as a physical location. But make no mistake: Downtown is also a place. The term was coined in New York in the early 19th century to describe the lower tip of Manhattan, the bustling heart of the city’s business, commercial, and residential life. That notion swept coast to coast, defined by skyscrapers, department stores, apartments, and plentiful gigs—no longer tethered to the concept of south, north, or center.
In the U.K., it’s called the “city centre,” in Germany, das Zentrum. Here, a century of explosive downtown growth defined the rise of America’s cities. They were the place to experience … everything and anything. We were drawn to them like luna moths to street lamps.
The lights are much brighter there. You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares.
Sadly, by the time Petula Clark‘s “Downtown” became a hit, in 1965, city hubs had already suffered through a couple of decades of ugly decline. In the post-World War II era, Americans left the cities en masse for the burgeoning suburbs. That urban flight led to years of neglect, rising crime, and industrial decay.
But the American downtown has come crawling back from its near-death experience.
Thanks to a surge of redevelopment in the mid-1990s, loft apartments were carved out of vacant office buildings, empty storefronts were taken up by trendy cafés, and once-downtrodden neighborhoods started to attract artists, rather than criminals.
They’ve become places where people actually want to live.
“People, young ones especially, love historical buildings that reintroduce them to the past,” says Dan Cort, author of the book “Downtown Turnaround.” “They want to live where they can walk out of the house, work out, go to a café, and still walk to work.”
The past few years have seen a long list of high-profile companies moving their headquarters back downtown. Motorola Solutions ditched a Chicago suburb for the city’s once-gritty West Loop; Amazon is building its headquarters, featuring three crystal domes, in downtown Seattle.
Such revivals boost property values to new heights and bring in some much-needed tourism dollars.
To find downtowns that are rising from the grave, our data team considered several factors for downtowns* in the 200 largest U.S. cities:
- Downtown residential population growth since 2012
- Number of restaurants, bars, grocery stores and food trucks per capita, and growth since 2012
- Number of department stores and independent retailers per capita, and growth since 2012
- Number of jobs per capita, and growth since 2012
- Home price appreciation since 2012 (we picked downtowns where the median price was no more than $400,000 in 2012, so they were really in need of revival)
- “Premium” of buying a home in downtown, compared with the median home price of the whole city
- Residential and commercial vacancy rate (the lower the better).
- Our top picks are not yet the ones that never sleep, but thanks to having turned around, they are now what the Urban Land Institute calls “18-hour markets“—a mix of shops, restaurants, and entertainment that generate excitement deep into the evening. Just listen to the music of a gentle bossa nova…
1. Pittsburgh, PA
Median home price in downtown: $353,000
Home price growth since 2012: 31%
Population growth: 32%
When the steel industry imploded in the late 1970s, Pittsburgh was devastated. About 150,000 manufacturing jobs vanished, companies went bankrupt, and stores downtown shuttered tight. In the Cultural District, turn-of-the-century theaters were left to deteriorate, and the businesses left were mostly strip joints, massage parlors, and low-end bars.
But then the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, a nonprofit art organization, renovated the theaters, bringing in a slew of concerts and touring Broadway shows. In the last decade, Pittsburgh has also constructed new performing arts centers, commissioned public art projects, and developed new urban parks.
A total of $7.8 billion in tourism revenue flowed into the Pittsburgh region in 2014.
“There’s so much beauty now to the downtown,” says Janna Sandleitner®, a Realtor from RE/MAX who works in the area.
In the downtown “Golden Triangle,” there are rooftop bars, hipsterfied eateries, and craft breweries. The renovated Market Square Place is buzzing day and night, and there’s even an influx of experimental public art. The latest installation: an “interactive jukebox” that played sound tracks while 6,000 LED lights flashed, making the square look like a giant spinning record in the sky. Cool, right?
“Before, downtown was just a place where people worked; now more people stay, eat, drink, and hang out,” says Michael Zhong, who landed a job in financial services downtown after college.
2. Indianapolis, IN
Median home price in downtown: $309,400
Home price growth since 2012: 20%
Population growth since 2012: 10%
Until four years ago, Indianapolis was a city where cars reigned supreme. What else would you expect of the home of the Indy 500? Streets were designed primarily to improve traffic flow, pedestrians were a rare breed, and the downtown had only 1 mile of bike lanes.
Then in 2013 came the Cultural Trail, an internationally acclaimed 8-mile biking and walking trail. It loops around every major cultural and entertainment venue in downtown, from the Indiana State Museum to the Indianapolis City Market. It helped change the landscape.
The trail also connects to the Indianapolis Canal on the west side of downtown, where crystalline waterways in the summer are filled with paddle boats and gondolas imported from Venice. On the banks, free morning yoga sessions are held weekly in the summer, a perfect way for city dwellers to work off a mid-week slump.
“Walkability is a huge draw. Downtown is definitively among the most premium real estate in Indianapolis,” says Realtor Lynn Wheeler from F.C. Tucker, who specializes in downtown real estate.
3. Oakland, CA
Median home price in downtown: $688,000
Home price growth since 2012: 111%
Population growth since 2012: 13%
They used to call this place “the Detroit of the West.” And no, that wasn’t a compliment.
Not long ago, no one wanted to live in Oakland because of the shuttered buildings, sky-high crime rate, and all-around lousy vibe.
“When I lived in San Francisco in 1998, there were certain BART stations you just didn’t get off in Oakland. But it’s changed drastically,” says Arron Sweeney, a Oakland Realtor with King Realty Group. Spurring the transformation: the city’s close proximity to the crazily overpriced San Francisco.
Over the last few years, the city has bulked up its police force and installed effective crime-stopping community efforts, like its Ceasefire program. In 2016, 88 murders were recorded in Oakland—still a lot, but substantially down from 145 a decade ago. Crime is concentrated on the east side, while downtown has become a lot safer, Sweeney says.
As crime receded, priced-out San Franciscans started to move across the bay—first in a trickle, then a flood. They turned the downtown around.
Now companies looking to expand from cramped San Francisco are also heading east. Next year, Uber will move its headquarters to downtown Oakland, bringing in 3,000 workers and joining the music-streaming pioneer Pandora and the health care giant Kaiser Permanente. Downtown Oakland is one of the few job centers in the Bay Area that is truly accessible by public transit, only an 11-minute train ride away from San Francisco’s Financial District.
4. Detroit, MI
Median home price in downtown: $219,900
Home price growth since 2012: 150%
Population growth since 2012: 15%
The Motor City’s fortunes rose and fell—and then fell some more—with the automobile industry. A decades-long decline virtually emptied out the once-teeming downtown. In 2013, Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history, from which it emerged in December 2014.
But while urban blight still plagues downtown, recovery efforts are steaming ahead. Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is building a 400-unit mixed-use complex in the northeastern corner of downtown, and another 200 micro-units for young professionals.
“Rather than incremental investments, upfront, these developers are putting in billions of dollars,” says Christopher Leinberger, professor of urban planning at George Washington University. “Those developers are confident that downtown Detroit will fundamentally change, and are willing to take risks.”
The once desolate place again boasts job opportunities. The Detroit Pistons recently announced their move back to downtown, which is expected to generate more than 2,000 jobs; a new Microsoft office and the expansion of CDK Global, which helps auto manufacturers improve online marketing, will add nearly 300 more.
To get an idea of just how far downtown has come, drive down Woodward Avenue and count the restaurants that weren’t there three years ago.
“There’s definitely a reason to be in downtown after dark now,” says Larry Else, a broker at Downtown Realty in Detroit.
5. Columbus, OH
Median home price in downtown: $272,000
Home price growth since 2012: 20%
Population growth since 2012: 9%
After the manufacturing industry went south, Columbus became known as true “flyover country.” But that’s changing. Old warehouses south of downtown have been turned into breweries, restaurants, and cafés.
Could it be? Columbus is getting stylish, hosting a well-attended yearly Fashion Week in October (the city is home to the headquarters of both Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch), and plenty of cool indie clothing stores in the Short North neighborhood, a mile north of downtown’s skyscrapers. Oh, and the city set a world record in 2014 for the largest ever drag-queen show.
“It feels like a little SoHo,” says Marin Roth, owner of clothing store Rowe Boutique in Short North. “There are a lot of urban families who are choosing to stay and raise their kids in the city.”
Old-timers remember the Scioto River, which flows through downtown Columbus, as muddy, broad, and lifeless. That has changed since 2013, when the city removed the Main Street Dam. The once submerged land became a 33-acre park with grass, trees, and bike paths.
6. Austin, TX
Median home price in downtown: $395,500
Home price growth since 2012: 6%
Population growth since 2012: 25%
The story of downtown Austin isn’t entirely about rising from the ashes, like the other cities here. Rather, it’s about a small urban area known best for hole-in-the-wall bars and middle-of-the-night taco joints exploding into a full-on hipster mecca. A YouTube video of downtown in 1996 shows hardly any traffic and lots of single-story stores, leaving plenty of sky in the skyline.
Today’s downtown is a place that attracts Silicon Valley techies long after the crowds of the music and technology festival SXSW empty out. Dozens of software, game, mobile, and chip design companies have already converged on downtown, and Google signed a lease on a 29-story office building that’s still under construction.
Right next to downtown, the University of Texas at Austin’s 50,000-plus students contribute to the neighborhood’s vibrant lifestyle, and many stick around after graduation. Sixth Street, known for its nightlife and music venues, has expanded to a five-block stretch. It’s even closed to car traffic on weekends.
“Other cities have nightlife starting from Friday. Downtown Austin has a thriving nightlife that starts on Thursday,” says Jane Ko, who runs the food blog “A Taste of Koko.” As for when it ends? Anyone’s guess.
7. Los Angeles, CA
Median home price in downtown: $617,500
Home price growth since 2012: 63%
Population growth since 2012: 10%
Amid its world-renowned suburban sprawl, downtown L.A. was a wasteland of half-empty office buildings. Until recently.
In the 100-year-old Grand Central Market, more than half the food stalls are new recruits since 2013. The Downtown Independent theater draws cool young crowds to its free screenings, and a deserted bank building was turned into the Last Bookstore, a bookstore/creative space already famous for its tunnels built from books and its typewritten scrolls flowing overhead.
“Five years ago, if you told people, ‘I live in downtown L.A.,’ people would be like, ‘Oh, really? Why?’” says Brigham Yen, a broker from Miren.Co, a commercial real estate firm downtown. “Now, they’re like, ‘Wow, that’s so cool!’”
The revival of downtown can be traced back to 1998, when developers converted the first vacant building into loft apartments. Residents followed, so did a new contemporary art museum, the Broad, in 2015, and an expanded train line that finally connected downtown to the beach town of Santa Monica in 2016. A recent Los Angeles Times article says downtown “hasn’t seen this much construction since the 1920s.”
8. Dallas, TX
Median home price in downtown: $333,900
Home price growth since 2012: 26%
Population growth since 2012: 25%
When the real estate market in Texas crashed in the early 1990s, nearly one-third of the offices in Dallas were left empty—the biggest chunk of urban vacancies in the country.
That era has ended. Abandoned downtown offices are now luxury lofts, and more new condos have gone up. Once a ghost town after dark, downtown has found new life.
A bold move in 2012—opening an urban park over the freeway that once isolated downtown—further catalyzed revival. The new Klyde Warren Park not only added 5.2 acres of green space, but made downtown walkable.
To make downtown truly livable, the Farmers’ Market was revived as a seven-day shopping destination. More than 100 booths wait to be discovered, from homemade jams to freshly baked French macarons. And try the jalapeño-flavored popcorn. You’ll thank us later.
9. Chicago, IL
Median home price in downtown: $395,000
Home price growth since 2012: 18%
Population growth since 2012: 21%
For the longest time, downtown Chicago, aka the Loop, was where office workers toiled in the lakefront skyscrapers—and then hopped a train home to more distant and pleasant neighborhoods.
That’s changing with the recent building boom—not offices, but apartments. The residential population in the Loop has grown 21% since 2012, mirroring a national trend that has young professionals moving back downtown where they can walk, bike, or scoot to work. To attract that young talent, more than 40 companies have announced relocation, mostly from the suburbs, to downtown, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.
And after hours, there are plenty of reasons to stick around. The hottest neighborhood for restaurants is just west of the Loop, in Fulton Market. And the nearby Revival Food Hall, which opened in 2016, features the Midwestern branch of Mario Batali’s Eataly, serving up a multistory Italian food experience.
And while Chicago is frequently cited by our president for its high crime rates, the Loop is also relatively safe compared to the rest of the city. It had one homicide in 2015 and two in 2016, according to a report from the University of Chicago Crime Lab.
10. Providence, RI
Median home price in downtown: $242,800
Home price growth since 2012: 21%
Population growth since 2012: 4%
In its heyday, Providence was a major manufacturing hub for steam engines, silverware, screws, and textiles. After World War II, the city struggled with declining manufacturing jobs, the heavy presence of the New England Mafia, and a neglected historic downtown divided by interstate highways.
But after investing in restoration, Providence has reinvented itself as a tourist destination. A renovated city hall, edgy galleries, and friendly dive bars have all made downtown exciting again, and Travel + Leisure magazine recently named Providence the most underrated city in the United States.
In 1994, an artist created the first WaterFire, a parade of bonfires floating on the Providence River, and many people rediscovered the riverfront. Today, 100 bonfires illuminate nearly two-thirds of a mile of downtown, as people gather to stroll along the river, listen to music, and watch performances.
More recently, the city shifted a freeway half a mile down the road to free up land contiguous to downtown for development. Providence Arcade, the nation’s oldest indoor mall, embraced the mixed-use trend: Retail shops and restaurants occupy the first floor, while microlofts above attract young residents.
