Run On The Banks: Cities Growing With Riverfront Development

For all too many years, many if not most American cities turned their backs on the rivers responsible for their very existence. The thinking held that banks along those tributaries were best left to factories, warehouses, and industrial real estate. If detritus associated with manufacturing needed trashing, well, the rivers provided a prime dumping spot.

Over the past few decades, that thinking has been turned on its head. In places like Tulsa, Okla.; Chattanooga, Tenn., and Rockford, Ill., to name just a few of many American river towns, newly created or soon-to-be-expanded riverwalks, parks and other riverfront lures are helping attract jobs and employees to the cities. Once, the rivers would have been the places the local convention and visitors bureaus hid away from any municipal tour. Today, they’re often the number one attraction.

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