One of the most notably successful historic preservation tools is the National Main Street Center’s Four-Point Approach™, which focuses on using design, economic restructuring, promotion, and organization to achieve its goals of preservation-based economic revitalization in cities across America. The Main Street Program’s approach has been broadly designed to accommodate the unique combination of factors that differ from city to city. Three of Texas’s twenty recertified Main Street cities were studied in order to answer the question: In recertified Main Street cities, what are the impacts within a historic downtown district after a community leaves the program and what factors encourage their return? This study examines the effects participation in the program has had on the downtown historic districts of Brenham, Gainesville, and Kilgore. The act of joining, leaving, and rejoining the program provides an opportunity for internal comparisons within these communities over time. Interviews and archival research were used to determine the reasons each selected recertified city left and returned to the program, and identified current problems that could threaten the program’s continued success. Despite some differing circumstances, these case studies suggest that the basic reasons both for leaving the program and later returning were strikingly similar: economic hardships in the cities eliminated support for the projects, causing them to end participation, while continued struggles with downtown vacancy rates and high business turnover sparked interest in rejoining. These communities realized the worth of the Main Street program’s structure and network in the success of revitalizing their downtown historic districts. The flexibility of the program’s framework allows for each participating city to tailor the approach to meet their specific needs and highlight their unique character. While the methods of implementation differ, many of the ongoing problems are the same. Recertified cities represent only a quarter of the cities currently participating in the Texas Main Street Program, but the lessons learned are potentially valuable to all Main Street communities as they face challenges in revitalizing their downtown districts and encourage the longevity of their own programs. / text

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Considering revitalization as a way of improving three interrelated aspects of quality of life including physical quality, social and economic welfare, this study sets out an evaluation framework to measure the success of implementations aiming to revitalize historic commercial places. This framework emerges from the qualities of built environments which are defined with reference to the normative urban design theory developed by Kevin Lynch. Urban qualities are defined with a comprehensive approach which takes into account spatial, social, and economic aspects of creating urban places. The Main Street Program, subject of this study, is a historic commercial district revitalization program developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States. This program introduces a preservation-based revitalization model. Based on a comprehensive approach, the program suggests working simultaneously on organization, design, economic restructuring, and promotion. This study analyzes the revitalization model of the Main Street Program by looking at its various aspects including organization models, funding tools, involvement of local communities, contributions of the federal and local governments, implementation, and self-evaluation. Besides, it introduces a citywide coordinating program, Boston Main Streets. Finally, it analyzes the revitalization of Washington Street in South End, Boston, one of the places where Main Street Program has been implemented. The street has been transformed from a vacant and deteriorated commercial street into a more vital, pedestrian oriented, mixed use place in a decade. This study aims to analyze the case from three different points. First, the success of the program is evaluated within the above framework. Second, the effectiveness of the program is examined through an outcome analysis. Finally, the organizational performance of the Main Street organization is analyzed.

The relationship between urban design and economic activity is seldom studied through empirical studies with a large number of cases due, in part, to the implicit and intangible nature of design. This study was intended to understand, analyze, and evaluate the complex relationship between the design and the economic revitalization of downtown districts with reference to the 78 active Texas Main Street Program districts. First, the design, promotion, organization, and economic restructuring components of the Main Street Program's comprehensive four-point approach were investigated. Next, the economic changes that occurred within those districts were analyzed from 1997-2001. Finally, employment, the number of jobs, the number of business establishments, the number of sales tax permits, the retail sales volume, and the commercial property values were compared for the same time period among three categories of cities: those active in the Main Street Program, those formerly active but now inactive, and those who have not participated. Findings revealed that several positive changes occurred in design, promotion, organization, and economic restructuring components of the four-point approach within the active Texas Main Street districts. It appears that these changes produced several positive outcomes for the physical, social, and economical environment of the active Main Street districts. Moreover, the findings suggests that these changes in the Main Street districts resulted in an increased economic activity, not only within the Main Street district by generating jobs, or producing private and/or public investment, but also across the Main Street city by creating community wide economic activity in most of the variables that were under investigation. The results indicate that the Texas Main Street Program, part of which is urban design oriented, is having a positive effect on economic activity within the active Main Street districts.