TOWN CENTRE MANAGEMENT

For years, city centres have been at the heart of growing concern. Their decline over the past decades, due to a series of various, multiple and complex reasons, also lies in a lack of structural and coordinated management. Yet, if town and city centres have been ailing for years, they are nowadays regarded as being one of the key elements of sustainable development for the 21^st century.

Today, they address several challenges, the main ones being: attracting new inhabitants whose needs in terms of living environment must be answered to, adapting the new economy and its trends, and developing a lasting form of economic activity.

As a meeting space, a social hub and a breeding ground for economic development, the town centre is a flag bearer, a testimony to the good health and dynamism of a territory. It is a quality indicator for foreign visitors and a landmark for the local population. Town Centres are complex spaces, restricted in size yet characterised by a wide diversity: it is a place for work, leisure, culture, history, education, living, health, shopping and public services. It is a multifunctional and multicultural space where the risk of conflict between the many stakeholders and users is high. This living space requires specially-adapted management methods based on a public private partnership benefiting from an all-round and coherent vision: town centre management and where all the players are called upon to work together, in a coherent way, for the benefit of their city as a whole. What is Town centre management ? Town Centre management helps stakeholders from the public, private, associative sectors and the civil society recognize that they have a mutual interest in collaborating by encouraging positive effects throughout the entire town centre. It has proven its worth in North America, Europe, more recently in Australasia and has emerged as a potent urban development tool. Town centre management is based on public-private partnerships and a shared interest in the city centre. This partnership gathers private and public stakeholders, whether from political, economic, associative or social areas, around a common project which consists in implementing a precisely-targeted and well-balanced strategy to answer the needs and expectations of its current and future users. The partnership strives to create the conditions for cities to be healthy, attractive and vibrant urban places. Every town centre is unique: this is why town centre management supports the development of unique partnerships that reflect the reality out in the field and works with groups that are the most appropriate to promote its development. The general operational structure, the work methods and the underpinning philosophy remain identical.
BACK