Abstract
Revitalizing American Cities brings together well-known scholars of urban economics and urban decline to explore histories and strategies for midsized American cities struggling in the twenty-first century. The volume presents both background information and new contributions to the literature. It is arranged logically, moving from a general overview of urban decline to city-, then neighborhood-level coping strategies, and finally to issues related to the New Economy. This book covers a tremendous range, from background material, to political challenges, to strategies for fostering innovation, and to sustainable development. In covering this range of considerations, this book provides readers with valuable citations for further exploration, and, impressively, remains accessible to many audiences.
Part 1, “City Decline and Revival,” provides an overview of the topic. The first two chapters (Glaeser and Duranton) review the known drivers of urban growth, borrowing heavily from their own prior work. Chapter 3 (Fee and Hartley), slightly more technical, explores the more specific question of whether and how Central Business District (CBD) density affects metropolitan income, and what this means for declining cities. Chapter 4 (Cochrane, Koropecki, Smith, and Ellis) concludes the section with a data-thick presentation of descriptive statistics of manufacturing—a key industry when discussing American urban decline.
Part 2, “Discovering Resilience,” explores the influence of local decision making on urban resilience. The section is well arranged, with the more descriptive chapters (chapters 5 and 6) following the highly descriptive part 1, and Mallach’s excellent chapter 7 moving toward considerations of urban policy, creating a segue into part 3. In chapter 5, Kodrzycki and Munoz focus on collaboration, innovation, institutions, and participation, whereas chapter 6 (Zeuli) contrasts two cities with similar histories to emphasize the role of decision making in reinvention. The theme of path divergence continues in chapter 7, where Mallach creates a typology of cities and explores factors that may drive the distinctions among types (“place luck,” assets and how they are leveraged, leadership, and plan quality).
Part 3, “Land and Neighborhood Policy,” shifts into planning and policy-specific questions. While Brophy’s chapter provides useful references to policy history, it also presents a stylized interpretation of historic policy and largely ignores the “urban triage” policies that, while developed locally, were made possible, if not encouraged by, Federal urban renewal policies. Brophy also suggests that placing affordable housing in middle-income neighborhoods “may signal to the market that the neighborhood is no longer viable,” which many affordable housing advocates would contest. In chapter 9, Mallach returns to his theme from part 2 of path dependence, here arguing that a planning vision must be compelling without “triggering the obstacles” to plan implementation; finding this balance, he argues, constitutes strategic incrementalism. Finally, in chapter 10, Alexander presents a decision tree for planners confronting property instability. While additional background or case studies on individual components might be helpful, this chapter is an essential reference for planners considering policy changes to confront property abandonment.
Part 4, “The New Economy and Cities,” delves into themes of the New Economy. Eugenie Birch presents hard-to-find descriptive statistics of the economic magnitude (not impact, per se) of eds and meds in cities, arguing that they play a critical role in the economic base of regions. This argument finds support elsewhere in the book, where the roles of anchor institutions and research capacity surface. Tumber’s chapter 12 demands attention and would make excellent discussion material for a graduate course on urban economics. She argues, among other points, that planners should return manufacturing areas to their former status as the seedbeds of innovation for their regions, retooling skills and equipment for cutting-edge product development and production. Laura Perna’s chapter is an excellent choice for the book’s conclusion. The theme of human capital and innovation recurs throughout the book. This final chapter’s explicit focus on workforce training is a pragmatic extension of and conclusion to that theme.
This book is a valuable resource for a range of audiences. It is well edited, showing careful author selection, logical ordering of contributions, and provision of in-text cross-references for themes shared by multiple chapters. The second half of the book is especially valuable for researchers of urban decline, providing discussion and extension of important themes.