Main street at the crossroads : towards an inclusive strategy for revitalising the southern zone of Ottawa's Bank Street Promenade

Ottawa's Bank Street Promenade was created in 1972, with a mandate to beautify and promote Bank Street from Wellington Street to Gladstone Avenue as a downtown shopping area. Twenty six years later, the purpose of this particular applied geography exercise was to develop a research-based, inclusive "made in Ontario" main street revitalisation strategy for the eleven block faces of the southern zone of the Bank Street Promenade in Ottawa's Centretown neighbourhood. This section of Bank Street has continued to lose its locational advantage due to — among other things — the impacts of: population deconcentration and decentralisation; a demographic shift in Centretown; the burgeoning growth of Ottawa's peripheral, low density, multinodal urban sprawl zone; and, the significant growth of the suburban commercial and retail sectors that provide goods and services to these areas. The recommended policies/programs form the basis of an achievable revitalisation strategy for the Bank Street Promenade's southern zone.