As we look ahead to the post-pandemic economy, Main Street programs must harness shifts accelerated by the pandemic. To help their communities thrive in a new economy, Main Street programs can embrace new community and economic development innovations to create quality jobs, advance equity, leverage shifts in lifestyle and consumer choices, and increase community wealth. From remote work to small-scale manufacturing to equity-focused entrepreneurship programming, and more, Main Streets are an incubator for ideas that will position our communities to thrive in the years to come.

A community's values, traditions, and culture come to life on Main Street through what it chooses to preserve, protect, and communicate in both physical and intangible ways. Main Street programs and other place-based revitalization organizations have an important role to play in ensuring that public spaces and signifiers of collective memory are reflective of and in service to all members of the community, and when necessary, engaging in difficult conversations to address past inequities. Join us as we explore the relationship between Main Streets of the future and our complicated histories; the ways in which the arts and storytelling can address real-world challenges and promote positive change; and the practice of historic preservation in a broader context in order to tell a fuller American story.

Strengthening commercial district housing, density, and mixed-use development is one of the most transformative ways that a community can drive investment in its downtown. Main Street programs and other place-based economic development organizations have an important role to play in advocating, planning, and facilitating community investments to ensure development projects reflect community interests and needs. To do this effectively, Main Street programs must be ambassadors for strategies and incentives, bring community stakeholders together, and build community-wide capacity to address the myriad issues involved in the development process. Sessions will explore how our redevelopment, planning, and preservation processes need to adapt to make it easier and more affordable to add housing downtown and showcase innovations from the field, including upper story housing programs, workforce housing strategies, working with property owners, and more.