Central business district

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(Redirected from Downtown)

For other meanings of the term downtown, see downtown (disambiguation).

"City center" redirects here. For the performing arts venue, see New York City Center.

Downtown Honolulu in Hawaii, United States, an example of an urban downtown district

Central business district (CBD) and downtown are terms referring to the commercial heart of a city. Downtown is the usual term in North America. In the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand the term "central business district" is used by geographers and sometimes by others, but the term city centre is much more common in colloquial usage. In the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, the term is often just shortened to the single word "city" in general conversation among residents of a city, giving rise to the phrase "going to the city". Some cities have a mixed use district known as uptown near the downtown area (in Minneapolis, for example, Uptown is a district nearly adjacent to downtown, centered around the Uptown Theater on the intersection of Lagoon St. and Hennepin Ave.) On the other hand, in some cities, like Charlotte, North Carolina, uptown is simply the historic name for the business center.

The CBD or downtown is the central district of a city, usually typified by a concentration of retail and commercial buildings. Although applicable to any city, both terms usually refer to larger cities.

The term city centre (or center city) is similar to CBD or downtown in that both serve the same purpose for the city, and both are seen by a higher-than-usual urban density as well as the often having the tallest buildings in a city. City centre differs from downtown in that downtown can be geographically located anywhere in a city, while city centre is located near the geographic heart of the city. Examples of a city centre can be found in Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, London, Sydney, and other cities. London effectively has two city centres rolled into one, namely the Roman City of London, and the medieval City of Westminster.

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List of typical CBD characteristics

A CBD is likely to have many of the following characteristics:

It has a distinct land use pattern that can be delimited from the rest of the settlement.
It is the geographical centre of the settlement.
It contains the settlement's main public buildings.
It contains the major retail outlets (though this is becoming less often the case, especially in the United States).
Similar activities within it are concentrated in certain areas (functional zoning).
It features vertical zoning.
It has the greatest concentration and number of pedestrians and traffic in general.
It is a focal point for transport.
It contains the greatest proportion of the settlement's offices.
It has the tallest buildings in the region to maximize land use.
It has the highest land values of the region.
It attracts people from outside its sphere of influence to work and spend money inside.
It is advancing into new areas (assimilation) and/or losing old commercial functions (discard).