Tacoma: How BLOXHUB members helped reimagine an American downtown - from post-pandemic standstill to a shared action plan

Series: International Collaborations Partners: ScanDesign Foundation, City of Tacoma / Location: Tacoma, USA / Members featured: SHL, AFRY, Agora, Field States, Gehl / Engage: US City Collaborations (Join Group)

With transatlantic headlines feeling unusually tense these weeks, it’s worth remembering that practical city-to-city collaboration still happens: quietly, pragmatically, and with real results.

In September 2024, BLOXHUB members joined the City of Tacoma on the ground for workshops and field visits - a key milestone in a collaboration that started earlier and continues to evolve.

Downtown Tacoma could easily have become another post-Covid cautionary tale. Like many cities in the US - and around the world - Tacoma struggled to bring life back to its core. Years of growing online retail, followed by the pandemic and more people working from home, hit the city centre hard. In a financial district with relatively few residents, empty offices quickly turned into empty streets. 

That “doom loop” brought vacancies, closed shops and a growing sense of insecurity and with it, the risk that people simply stopped using downtown altogether. Tacoma’s mayor made reversing this spiral a personal priority and started looking for new inspiration.

At the same time, BLOXHUB was seeing increasing interest from US cities in Nordic approaches to sustainable and livable urban development. Delegations were coming to Copenhagen not only to see climate solutions, but to understand how city centres can stay vibrant, inclusive and people-focused.

This set the scene for a new kind of collaboration.  

The Nordic working approach in three principles

Throughout the Tacoma process, the work was guided by three practical principles:

👉 Collaboration: Build shared ownership early by working with city teams, local stakeholders and specialists in the same process.   

👉 Integration: Connect buildings, streets, mobility, public life and governance so initiatives reinforce each other.

👉 Experimentation: Start with steps that can be tested under current conditions, then learn and scale.

Why Tacoma teamed up with BLOXHUB

Tacoma didn’t come to BLOXHUB for a pre-packaged masterplan. They came to tap into a cross-disciplinary ecosystem, to get an outside perspective that could challenge assumptions without losing local grounding, and to work through a Nordic approach built on collaboration, integration and experimentation. 

Through BLOXHUB’s outreach work in the US (in collaboration with the US Embassy in Denmark), Tacoma and BLOXHUB quickly aligned around one central question:

How can we bring people, life and business back to downtown – in a way that fits Tacoma’s own identity, and not a copy-paste solution from elsewhere? 

Members in the middle of the process

From day one, the Tacoma collaboration was not just a project between city representatives and an organisation. It was a project between a local city ecosystem and a network of Nordic practitioners in close collaboration with ScanDesign Foundation. 

BLOXHUB formed a dedicated US group and curated a member team spanning urban strategy and governance, public space and urban life, integrated mobility, and transformation of existing buildings and streets - supported by participatory methods that brought local stakeholders into the process.

Key contributors included SHL, AFRY, Agora, Field States, and Gehl, each bringing a different lens on how to rethink downtowns in practice.

Together with Tacoma’s city team and local stakeholders, they took part in workshops, field visits and design sessions – online and on the ground in the US. Rather than presenting finished solutions, they worked with local actors to map challenges, test ideas and gradually stitch together a set of integrated initiatives.

What came out of Tacoma?

The collaboration resulted in a set of concrete, integrated design initiatives for downtown Tacoma – developed jointly by BLOXHUB members and local stakeholders.

Each initiative was framed not only as a physical change, but as part of a wider system of linked actions, with a clear picture of who needed to collaborate to move it forward, and what first steps could be tested immediately under current conditions.

This means Tacoma leaves the process not just with ideas, but with a shared action plan that links design, governance and implementation – and gives the city a clear way to start.

In the later phase of the collaboration, a group of key stakeholders began early implementation to test, learn and adapt. The next phase will focus on supporting replication and measurement as initiatives mature.

We see more cities asking for measurable strategies and concrete solutions to reach their climate goals in the built environment. Projects like Tacoma create real opportunities for specialised Danish firms in urban development and strengthen the shift towards more sustainable cities in the US. 

 - Lasse Lind, Architect & Partner, 3XN/GXN

For members, the project provided a structured way into a complex market as part of something bigger:

For an individual Danish advisor, it can be difficult to gain a foothold in the US market. With BLOXHUB orchestrating a joint internationalisation effort, AGORA – together with other members – can offer American cities a coherent approach to urban development that matches their needs, while also giving BLOXHUB members a stronger and more differentiated position internationally. 

— Sara Nardi, Consultant, AGORA

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Join the US City Collaborations Group on Square to see what’s coming next - and add one small “first step” you’ve seen work in downtown revitalisation.