Design as a Community Catalyst - Rebuilding Downtown Identities

Abstract

Thriving Post-World War Two America created cities that were no longer dependent upon America’s major city centers, but rather a network of regional developments. Highways allowed metropolitans to rapidly expand and engulf the small satellite towns that were once independent of any major city. Small satellite communities, like Lake Orion, Michigan, were forced to function very differently; Main Street was no longer the center of the community, but rather viewed as an inconvenient place of the past. As the suburbs developed on fringes of town, community borders slowly blurred one town into the next. Today these satellite communities lack identity, but have the embodied attributes to become a viable urban core. A reinvestment in these existing downtown conditions, via the intervention of a community catalyst, can establish these lost identities. The study of Lake Orion’s, past, present and future frameworks inspired a connection back to the community’s waterfront roots. By reengaging the community’s assets in new ways, innovative programing and development opportunities are presented, turning what were once limitations into opportunities for the community’s future.