Abstract
The articles in this volume share a common theme: cities need to be creative and pragmatic in pursuing growth strategies that fit a Global Age. In the Industrial Age, geography and transportation defined comparative advantage. No more! Nowadays, cities must appeal to businesses that have a wide choice of geography. Cities and metropolitan areas succeed by investing in human capital (i.e., education, training, skills, entrepreneurship), by promoting city livability to attract creative and technology-oriented workers, and by pursuing flexible regional approaches to public–private collaborations that cross local political boundaries.
The contributions in Revitalizing American Cities are exceptionally well written; as a result, the volume can be used as a supplemental text in the classroom. The volume even draws on the experience of small- and medium-sized cities in its identification of a number of local “best practices” such as the formulation a clear postindustrial vision, the sustained commitment of community, and the promotion of regional integration and new structures for regional collaboration. The book also offers important political advice for actors attempting to bring about local transformation: Start small! Be realistic! Adopt an incremental approach that focuses on politically viable undertakings and build from there!
Rather disappointing, however, the book reports much of what has been said many times before by prominent scholars in the field, including the volume’s contributors. In the volume’s opening selection, Edward Glaeser (“The Historical Vitality of Cities,” chapter 1) articulates once more his widely published views on cities as agglomeration centers that promote the cross-fertilization of ideas and innovation. Glaeser scores the federal government for its programs that invest in physical infrastructure rather than in people.
Similarly, the book identifies key elements of a successful local postindustrial strategy: economic diversification, “eds and meds,” the “creative class,” universities as key actors in the knowledge economy, effective leadership strategies that build informal collaborations for regional action, and collaborations that embrace nonprofit organizations. These points have been made in numerous other studies. Nor will it come as a surprise to scholars in the field that metropolitan economies are characterized by interdependence and that regions that “tend to the core” (Kyle Fee and Daniel Hartley, “The Relationship between City Center Density and Urban Growth or Decline,” 64, chapter 3) and make the central city attractive enjoy the best chances of resurgence. Nor has manufacturing totally forsaken cities; in recent years, postindustrial big cities have even witnessed a “modest comeback” in manufacturing (Steven Cochrane et al., “Central Cities and Metropolitan Areas: Manufacturing and Nonmanufacturing Employment as Drivers of Growth,” 55, chapter 4), underscoring the role that manufacturing can contribute to a city’s future resurgence. This, too, is important but is not news; it is a perspective that the Brookings Institution has documented quite well.
The volume gives inadequate attention to the role played by immigration in the economic rebound of once-fading communities. Alan Mallach (“Parallel Histories, Diverging Trajectories: Resilience in Small Industrial Cities,” chapter 7) is the sole exception, as he identifies the contribution of new Hispanic arrivals to Allentown’s rebound (a contribution that is less evident in Reading). In contrast, Cochrane et al. (chapter 4) use local population growth as a metric of city success without giving fair weight to the possibility that demographic growth may be more the product of a new immigration rather than an indicator of the success of a local development strategy.
The book has its roots in a 2012 Federal Reserve Bank–sponsored conference in Philadelphia called “Reinventing Older Communities.” The volume’s contributors are adept in using metrics to identify successful cities and best practice strategies. Kodrzycki and Muñoz (“Lessons from Resurgent Mid-Sized Manufacturing Cities,” chapter 5), for instance, identify ten resurgent cities from a twenty-six-city sample. Yet, despite their use of numerical indicators, the degree of overall success of a locality’s economic strategy is still a matter of debate. A visitor to a number of the resurgent cities may even question if local strategies have really succeeded all that much in bringing about urban rebirth. As the authors admit, high poverty levels remain even in their resurgent cities.
A large number of the volume’s contributors are trained in economics. As a result, the book’s chapters are focused on the factors that promote local development. They devote relatively little space to such political concerns as identifying just whose interests are reflected in the new pro-growth arrangements. The chapters in the volume celebrate the new spirit of collaboration; they do note subject business-led partnerships, their spending priorities, and their focus on downtown revitalization to great scrutiny. Clearly, informal public–private partnerships constitute an important arena in which collaborative action can be arranged outside the hallways of government. This is what Kodrzycki and Muñoz mean in their call for the “modernization of civic infrastructure” (97). But the articles barely touch on concerns for accountability and democracy. Just whose interests are, and are not, effectively represented in the business-led shadow governments created outside of normal channels of government?
A number of the articles in the volume present a similarly upbeat assessment of the role played by universities in neighborhood renewal. Eugenie L. Birch (“Anchor Institutions in the Northeast Megaregion: An Important but Not Fully Realized Resource,” chapter 11) observes the impressive local economic contributions of anchor institutions, such as the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Wayne State University. Birch describes the extensive resources that universities command and the extensive indirect impacts of the revitalization projects they support. Birch urges their “further institutional growth while recognizing the needs and rights of the communities in which they operate” (223). But the chapter, which details the various positive contributions of anchor institutions, makes only the briefest reference to displacement and other neighborhood ills that can result from university-backed transformation projects. Nor does the chapter identify best practices and procedural protections that can help to ensure that neighboring communities are effectively engaged in, rather than steamrolled over by, institutional-led renewal. Other books, such as Harley Etienne’s Pushing Back the Gates (2012), have described the impressive contributions made by universities to a neighborhood’s turnaround while also noting the limits and risks of university engagement. Etienne observes that universities have a commitment to a place-based definition of redevelopment, which is not at all the same as poverty reduction.
Various selections in Revitalizing American Cities present brief descriptions of decision-making processes that profess to have a strong commitment to inclusion. But participatory processes that start out with the best of intentions oftentimes, in the end, wind up not being very participatory. The authors do not present sufficient evidence to allow the reader to see if the new governance processes truly give low-income and minority groups an effective voice in the renewal of their neighborhoods. Kodrzycki and Muñoz do pay attention to neighborhoods and argue that the new-style partnerships have the ability to attract foundation funding and thereby serve the poor. However, they present no real evidence that neighborhood voices are truly engaged and that local residents are anything other than junior partners who lack any great influence over future plans for their neighborhoods. The contributors to this volume are primarily interested with overall economic redevelopment, more so than with community development.
Allan Mallach’s second chapter in this volume (“Transformation Is Messy Work: The Complex Challenge of Spatial Reconfiguration in America’s Legacy Cities,” chapter 9) recognizes that overcoming the political barriers to comprehensive planning necessitates vision, sustained leadership, and the cultivation of regional ties and partnerships. Mallach cautions against taking the advice of change agents who argue that big projects and a radical rethinking are necessary to reverse a community’s long-term postindustrial slide. Instead, Mallach argues for a “strategic incrementalism” that devotes its energies to smaller-scale and more politically doable revitalization projects. As Mallach insightfully observes, big plans are also likely to mobilize big opposition. Relatively small projects are also more likely to promote, rather than pose a threat to, viable low-income neighborhoods.
Paul C. Brophy’s “A Market-Oriented Approach to Neighborhoods” (chapter 8) and Alan Mallach’s chapters present what is arguably the most provocative argument in the book: a call for the retargeting of urban aid programs to “middle neighborhoods.” Brophy advocates modifying the regulations accompanying the CRA and other federal (and state) aid programs in order to allow localities to focus their efforts on savable neighborhoods rather than continuing to spend money, often quite futilely, on a city’s most distressed communities. Brophy’s and Mallach’s proposed retargeting can be defended in terms of both program efficiency and effectiveness. A focus on middle communities is a preventive strategy to stem the spread of blight, a productive use of shrinking federal aid resources.
But there is no real discussion of the equity concerns entailed by such a triage-like reform of intergovernmental assistance. Nor is there explicit recognition of the risks incurred by such a loosening of program rules. As a comprehensive review of the Community Development Block Grant program has made clear (see the 2014 CDBG Program at 40, special issue of Housing Policy Debate), decentralization does more than permit greater local flexibility and efficiency; it also enables localities to alter the types of projects that are funded and to redefine who are the ultimate beneficiaries of program assistance. The CRA has a history of bringing new investment dollars to troubled communities. What would be the consequences in a city’s more impoverished core communities if CRA and other program rules were modified to allow the greater targeting of middle communities? Such an important question is not explored.
Despite a few shortcomings, Revitalizing American Cities should be of interest both to urban scholars and to redevelopment officials concerned with finding effective renewal strategies.