Cultivating vibrant and healthy downtowns

By Chris Arnold

Building bustling downtowns and supporting small businesses

This episode features Jonathan Berk. Since 2016 he’s served as a Director at the Detroit based placemaking startup Patronicity, and their new Placemaking Advisory firm, Bench Consulting, supporting hundreds community driven placemaking projects across the country. Jonathan is also the co-founder of Retail Reimagined, an organization leveraging creative collaborations and innovative solutions to bring a new vibrancy to vacant storefront spaces and main streets.

Jonathan is a placemaker and New Urbanist in every sense of the word with a voracious appetite for studying and learning about new methods of community and economic development from around the world. His focus remains on building vibrant communities that foster connectivity and creativity and support a thriving, healthy downtown, small business ecosystem and community.

He currently sits on the local advisory board of Leading Cities, a global leader in Smart City solutions, city diplomacy and collaboration advancing sustainability and resilient city strategies and technologies.

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