Kennedy Smith is one of the nation’s foremost experts on commercial district revitalization and main street economics.
Kennedy has been a leader in downtown economic development for more than 30 years. After serving as director of Charlottesville, Virginia’s downtown revitalization organization in the early 1980s, she joined the staff of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s National Main Street Center in 1985 and became its director in 1991. During her 19-year tenure, the Main Street program became one of the most successful economic development programs in the US, generating $18 billion in new investment and stimulating development of 226,000 new jobs and 56,000 new businesses and expanding to a nationwide network of almost 2,000 towns and cities, with additional programs in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and the UK.
In 2004, Kennedy and several colleagues launched the Community Land Use and Economics Group, LLC, a specialized consulting firm that helps civic leaders gather and apply market information to successfully strengthen commercial districts, cultivate locally owned businesses, strengthen community development programs and policies, and improve main street revitalization efforts. In 2020, she became a Senior Researcher for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit organization that challenges concentrated economic and political power and champions an approach in which ownership is broadly distributed, institutions are humanely scaled, and decision-making is accountable to communities.
Kennedy’s work has been featured in news media ranging from the New York Times, Business Week, Forbes, Governing, and NPR to “CBS Sunday Morning,” and Public Radio International’s “Marketplace.” She has written numerous articles on the economic dynamics of traditional business districts and is a popular international speaker on small business development, retail development policy, and commercial district development issues. Kennedy has been honored by Planetizen as one of the “100 Most Influential Urbanists of All Time” (2023) and one of the “100 Top Urban Thinkers” (2009). Fast Company magazine named her to its first list of “Fast 50 Champions of Innovation,” recognizing “creative thinkers whose sense of style and power of persuasion change what our world looks like and how our products perform.” In May 2004, the National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized her achievements with its President’s Award, for her “leadership and vision … in creating one of the most admired and successful preservation programs in the country.” She was a 2005-06 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In addition to her work with ILSR, Kennedy teaches a graduate-level class in historic preservation economics for Goucher College and is a contributor to several professional journals.