The Main Street Canada approach for small historic towns

Abstract

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, small towns in Canada developed around a Main Street. This is where the shops, the restaurants, the hotels and the important public buildings were built. Yet, following the end of the Second World War, Canada’s small historic towns and their Main Streets began to deteriorate. Various initiatives were undertaken to revitalise them, notably the urban renewal efforts of the 1960s and the beautification schemes of the 1970s. For the most part, these efforts failed. In 1979, the Heritage Canada Foundation launched a programme called Main Street Canada and developed it on the premises that downtowns are complex entities: to prosper they must develop both economically and environmentally. The programme's strategy was based loosely upon the approach that the rival shopping centres used: open an office in the heart of the shopping district; install a coordinator who lives and works in the community; operate a programme based on the four-point approach of organisation, marketing, economic development and design improvement. This approach was incremental, emphasised widespread local participation, developed local resources and promoted local communal identity. This approach was successfully implemented in hundreds of Canadian small communities and in thousands in the USA.