Population as the key to revitalization success

Lately, I've been saying that our job as revitalizers is to stimulate demand--for either or both residential housing stock or commercial and retail space in places that have a great deal of vacant property, for whatever reason.

I keep forgetting to mention a conversation a few nights ago with a Minneapolis official with a large number of responsibilities for commercial district revitalization there. She said that a grad student intern did a regression analysis of the various factors that tied together successful revitalization efforts in Minneapolis. Population was by far and away the most significant indicator, more significant than income.