What happens when Nordic urban thinkers and local changemakers unite to transform a city center? The Tacoma Downtown Action Plan offers a bold, community-rooted vision for downtown Tacoma — one block, one initiative, one partnership at a time.
Tacoma, like many mid-sized cities, was hit hard post-COVID. Downtown foot traffic faded, storefronts closed, and communal spaces went quiet. But instead of settling for slow recovery, Tacoma chose reinvention — anchored in experimentation and collective ownership.
At the heart of this transformation is a new kind of placemaking: one that understands a city isn’t built by buildings alone, but by the interactions, identities, and everyday rituals of its people.
The strategy introduces a unifying concept: the Center of Gravity along Broadway — Tacoma’s main spine — where interconnected initiatives draw people in with opportunities to eat, explore, work, play, and linger.
This approach is rooted in three key principles:
- Integration – Aligning mobility, food, learning, and recreation to form a cohesive ecosystem.
- Experimentation – Starting with small-scale, low-cost pilots to test what works in the real world.
- Collaboration – Engaging residents, businesses, schools, developers, and global experts as co-creators.
- City of Tacoma – Anchoring the plan through public sector leadership
- Downtown Tacoma Partnership (DTP) and Make It Tacoma – Connecting the dots locally between entrepreneurs, property owners, and public programs
- Local stakeholder groups – Bringing community insights and aligning the plan to build on existing efforts
- BLOXHUB – Leading the international knowledge exchange and strategic framing
- Gehl – Delivering human-centered design for public life and mobility
- Agora – Shaping activation strategies through regenerative food system concepts (like the Food Forest)
- Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Field States – Empowering creative entrepreneurs through architectural vision and place-based strategy
- AFRY – Contributing expertse in sustainable infrastructure and mobility re-imagination
- Broadway Trail: Turning an underused corridor into a cohesive, walkable spine for the city.
- Food Forest: A bold response to limited food access downtown via a community-powered culinary hub.
- Open Tacoma: A launchpad for entrepreneurial dreams, where vacant spaces become dynamic startups.
- Show Me Your Tacoma: A two-month, crowdsourced city festival that invites everyone to co-create the public realm.
- Tacoma StepScape: Unlocking the power of overlooked hill climbs as vibrant connectors.
- Unveiled Patios: Reclaiming on-street parking for dining, play, and public life.
- Student Commons: A dedicated student indoor-outdoor hangout space co-designed and run by youth.
- Destination Downtown: A mobility strategy to improve parking use and walking connections, freeing streets for public life.
In the plan, local energy meets Nordic perspective. It is developed through a partnership between:
Highlighted initiatives include:
The plan is more than a set of projects — it’s a living experiment in civic entrepreneurship, rooted in Tacoma’s own identity and catalyzed by international know-how.
Dive deeper into the full plan and discover what cities can learn from Tacoma: Insights & Learnings + Recommendations + Appendix