This page is live as a working thesis and is intentionally built for expansion as interviews, municipal research and field evidence accumulate.
The failure of a downtown is not always a failure of buildings. It can be a failure of reasons. No reason to arrive. No reason to linger. No reason to return. Energy collapses long before the infrastructure does.
The practical question is not simply how many storefronts exist. It is how many simultaneous reasons a person has to be there: commerce, food, music, culture, events, people, light, surprise and participation.
What comes next
This note will be expanded with interviews, source material, field observations and direct evidence as the work develops. The point is to make the thinking public enough to be challenged — and structured enough to become useful.