What's Up With the Downtown?

What’s Up with the Downtown? uses North Bay, Ontario to examine issues of downtown core usage and design in rural North American cities. As malls and box retail have moved to the forefront of physical spaces catering to consumer demand, the contemporary downtown cannot hope to compete at the same level in its current state and must adapt and progress the user experience to regain consistent usage. Past revitalization efforts in North American downtowns have focused on the retail experience, like that of the mall, as opposed to community-based design. In this thesis, the proposed design will focus on three areas of intervention in North Bay’s downtown: wayfinding, pedestrian experience, and community-oriented programming. The proposal will draw information from previously completed master planning exercises by the city and other contemporary pedestrianization and revitalization efforts. The proposal presented in this thesis will challenge the existing ideas of how North Bay’s downtown can be effectively designed to re-establish the space as the city’s core