In the last couple of months, members of the Downtown Boulder Partnership staff visited five very different cities (New York, Dallas, Austin, Colorado Springs, and Reno) in an ongoing effort to learn lessons from the field to bring back to Downtown Boulder. None of these places are obvious comparable cities to Boulder, and certainly, none have fully “figured it out” in terms of place management best practices. But what is true is that sharing information with peers from downtowns of all sizes and geographies, with all types of contributing factors can usually provide insight to help us do a better job of managing Downtown Boulder.

Collectively the team has brought back a wealth of information about parklets and street repurposing, wayfinding, activating vacant storefronts, public restrooms, homelessness response, experiential retail, economic development, DEI, and so much more. We have already taken steps to implement some initiatives inspired by our education.

The world is changing so rapidly, as are the tools and understanding available to the place management profession. If I were to synthesize the learning from all of our piers to one overarching lesson it is this: There may not any longer be “best” practices. Instead, our downtowns exist in a dynamic and complex world that requires continuous experimentation with lots of input and good data to measure impacts.

Some of the information we bring back from other downtowns simply does not apply to Boulder. Some of it does. Best practices in another city, from last year, may not be what we need in Boulder today, but continually finding the nuggets of inspiration always helps us towards “better practices” in everything we do. I look forward to sharing some of what we are learning in the coming weeks.

Chip