“What is downtown?” is usually how I begin presentations I give about the downtown or the Downtown Development Authority, where I work.

What is the downtown? According to two high school classes I asked last week: “Downtown Scoops.” “Cabin Creek.” “Lots of old buildings.” “Lots of brick.” The same question asked to a group of adults last week: “Historic buildings.” “Local businesses.” “Events and festivals.”

If I asked you to define downtown, how would you define it? What connotations and images come to mind? What makes it different than any other part of town?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, downtown is defined as ” the lower part of a city or town, also: the main business district or central part of a city or town.” The Oxford English Dictionary first cites “downtown” in 1770, in reference to the center of Boston. Some posit that the term “downtown” originated in New York City in the 1800s, when the lower part, the original settlement of Manhattan, was considered “down,” as the city grew “up” north, downtown being the center of business and uptown being more residential.

Do those definitions accurately capture what downtown is, what it signifies?

When I say downtown, some images and associations pop up for each of us. Historic buildings. Densely built buildings. Local businesses. Hanging flower baskets, Christmas decorations. Perhaps experiences come to mind: eating lunch outside at the Fresh Palate on a summer day, standing under the soft glow of twinkle lights and red-bowed wreaths the night of the holiday parade. Perhaps memories: shopping downtown with your parents as a child, walking through downtown streets and going through in your mind’s eye what has changed, what used to be, and what is still there.

One of the core values of downtown development, and the work of DDAs, is that downtowns hold immense value to both individuals and the community — that downtowns are worth investing in and crucial to a city’s success and vibrancy. If the whole downtown was razed and turned into a highway, a parking lot, or a shopping mall — a hyperbole, of course — that the community would feel that something irreplaceable, crucial to its identity, had been lost.

In the 1960s and 1970s, investment turned away from downtowns. The popularity of the suburbs, the introduction of big-box stores, and the availability of new construction on the outskirts of town strained downtowns throughout the country as their buildings deteriorated, businesses left, or businesses closed. To counteract that, in 1975, the State of Michigan enacted legislation that allowed municipal governments to create DDA’s within their city with the mission to revitalize downtowns, to drive reinvestment back into them, and to prevent their deterioration.

Many in the field of community revitalization say the pendulum is swinging back toward downtowns. People are remembering those historic cores of their towns, filled with local businesses, stores, offices, and restaurants, are important. That everything that goes into making a downtown what it is, from decorations to its history, from festivals to the memories associated with it, are vital to a community’s identity, culture, and history.

Wikipedia defines downtown as “a term primarily used in North America by English-speakers to refer to a city’s commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart, and is often synonymous with its central business district.”

To me, that is a much more satisfying definition of what a downtown is. A city’s commercial, cultural, historical, and geographic heart. More than just a combination of old buildings, larger than the sum of its parts. A heart of the community: something vital and something central, central to its history, culture, identity.

What that means to each of us may be something different, but, cumulatively, holds power as something vital, something worth protecting and treasuring.

Anne Gentry graduated from Brown University with a degree in comparative literature and has studied in Italy and South Australia. She is currently executive director of the Alpena Downtown Development Authority.