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Article
Reviving Cleveland’s Commercial Corridors: Analyzing the Storefront Renovation Program, 1983–2016
Journal of Urban Affairs
  • Kelly L Kinahan
  • Stephanie Ryberg Webster, Cleveland State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-25-2021
Abstract

In shrinking cities, commercial district decline has mirrored other patterns of depopulation and deindustrialization. Uneven development has emerged as the prevailing spatial pattern for shrinking cities in recent decades. Cleveland’s Storefront Renovation Program (SRP) is a local historic preservation-based strategy focused on improving commercial corridors. In this paper, we investigate whether the urban geography of the SRP aligns with theories of uneven development in shrinking cities. Using address-level data of projects and investments from 1983 to 2016, we analyze the spatial distribution using hot spot analysis, the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, and a neighborhood typology. Overall, we find the SRP program moderately contributed to uneven development, and increasingly so in recent decades, with clear clusters of investment in gentrifying neighborhoods and downtown Cleveland, while also supporting reinvestment in White, working-class areas early in its history.

DOI
10.1080/07352166.2021.1915152
Citation Information
Kelly L. Kinahan & Stephanie Ryberg-Webster (2021) Reviving Cleveland’s commercial corridors: Analyzing the Storefront Renovation Program, 1983–2016, Journal of Urban Affairs, DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2021.1915152