Quote Originally Posted by Novine View Post
This sounds like a fairly weak argument. What downtown neighborhoods support the breadth of retail that some of you are arguing represents a real "downtown".
The point people are making is that these used to be characteristics of these downtowns, and are no longer. 15 years ago, things like hardware stores, jeans stores, card stores, etc. were common to places like Royal Oak, and are now quite rare.

And that's why 15 years ago, downtowns were battling malls for retail dollars. When Somerset expanded, it had huge repercussions for downtown Birmingham. Now Somerset is irrelevent to Birmingham, because they no longer compete.

Outside of the Michigan [[and really most the Midwest), I see plenty of urban neighborhoods with things like hardware stores. They've very common in retail strips you see in various urban areas, from Brooklyn to Portland to New Orleans.