Americans have planned for their downtowns within a continually changing framework of images and assumptions about the nature of central business districts. During each decade since World War II, discussion of downtown problems and possibilities has been dominated by a distinct set of assumptions that has conditioned academic research, federal policy, and local planning. From decade to decade, experts on downtowns have chosen different themes as central to the interpretation of downtown growth, change, and policy needs. As the understanding of the situation has changed, so have the preferred planning solutions and public interventions.This argument about the importance of understanding the history of "downtown" as an intellectual construct can be contrasted with three major approaches that have dominated the analysis of downtown planning and policy in the United States over the last half century.A number of writers have analyzed downtown policy as an expression of interest-group or class politics. In this interpretation, downtown is one of several arenas in which different groups contest for control of urban land patterns. Most common, the battle for downtown is seen as a one-sided contest between the city's large corporations, banks, and land owners on one side and small businesses and low-income residents on the other. Influential examples include Clarence Stone's work on Atlanta, Arnold Hirsch's study of Chicago, Chester Hartman's work on San Francisco, and Chris Silver's history of Richmond. Gerald Suttles's recent examination of contemporary Chicago in The Man-Made City recycles the same approach with sympathy for the goals of gentrification and land conversion rather than the more common concern with the social costs of downtown JOURNAL