Photo by Wes Roberts

On February 25, Architecture Sarasota hosted Brent Toderian as part of their lecture series, Downtown Sarasota: Beyond Our Borders. Toderian is a prominent urbanist and former chief city planner of Vancouver and consults cities worldwide on matters such as urban planning, downtown revitalization and urban change management. Below is an excerpt from the full Q&A interview that will appear in the May/June 2025 issue of SRQ Magazine.

SRQ: Sarasota is in the midst of preparing a new downtown master plan. What are the attributes of a strong downtown?

Toderian: There are two different ways of looking at the role of a downtown. One is that it continues to be the magnet, the destination for the city. There’s the strategy that says we have to do everything we can to make downtown the best magnet that it can be. That’s place-making and having great streets, great retail opportunities and great entertainment that create a fun experience for visitors. That’s about bringing people in from the outside, however. The other half of the strategy revolves around creating a rich, dense, urban neighborhood downtown, which has become particularly important since the pandemic. That’s not just about creating housing units, however, it’s about creating an area where people want to live and to stay. What you really want in a downtown is the benefit of being able to ride down the elevator, which is a form of public transit, and walk to get your fresh food, your groceries, your hardware. It’s part of what I call the urban contract—you’re asking people to trade their backyard and their media room in the basement for urban downtown living. The only way that it’s a good trade is if you replace those suburban amenities with public parks and amenities so that you never have to get in the car for anything. It’s about creating public sector offerings like the farmers market that takes over downtown Sarasota on the weekends.

Photo by Wes Roberts

To learn more click here