The reason that most big projects and events don't catalyze complementary community development

Don Rypkema says that the impact of a typical stadium project is 1.5 blocks. Roberta Gratz writes in Cities Back from the Edge about project planning vs. bottom-up revitalization and how big projects tend to not have the impact that is trumpeted. Of course, this is based on the writings in part of Jane Jacobs (Roberta's two books are like primers based on Jane's book, with many examples that illustrate the points made in Death and Life of the Great American City).

I've written about this in terms of the DC Convention Center, and how for the most part, in the area around the center, the retail is pathetic.

Why? Because they took no real and substantive steps to simultaneously focus on and revitalize the commercial properties around the Convention Center, in advance of the Center's opening. (They did have a small program, about $1MM, for residential improvements but in the context of the over $400MM spent on the Convention Center, I would aver that it wasn't a substantive amount.)

What you need is a simultaneous, linked and complementary revitalization planning process for the area around the Big Project or Big Event in order to adequately harness the _potential_ energy that _could_ come about, but will come about _only_ if there is a specific, linked plan devised and funded in order to bring it about.

Chicago has a tremendous opportunity to spark massive city-wide neighborhood revitalization, if they begin the steps "today" to put such a process in place.