This article from Rueters highlights innovations from across the nation to address the problem of significantly declined populations in older industrial cities and the resulting blight and infrastructure. The article begins by praising the Genesee County Land Bank for it’s innovative approach to urban revitalization through vacant lot reclamation and demolition. The Land Bank has successfully demolished 1,000 homes in five years. The concept of deliberately shrinking a city usually raises some eyebrows. After all, shrinking implies smaller, and smaller isn’t exactly an American ideal. But it’s necessary. As Dan …

Last month the Cleveland+Youngstown+Pittsburgh Regional Network hosted a conference that was [coincidentally?] entitled “Rebuilding the Cities that Built America.” The conference featured a briefing on The Community Regeneration, Sustainability, and Innovation Act of 2009, a keynote address from Dan Kildee, former Genesee County Treasurer and current President of The Center for Community Progress, and a lunchtime plenary that explored the new Sustainable Communities Initiative. The aim of the conference was to exchange best practices and policies that can benefit older industrial cities and build relationships across the three cities.
The following …

The Next American City published a two part story on “…how the federal government provides roadblocks to enacting ‘rightsizing’ policies in older industrial cities, and what can be done to change this.”
The second article especially highlights the inadequacies of the federal government to enact effective policies to help these cities rebuild and precisely articulates all of the nuances and difficulties. For instance, “…small population leads to a small tax base, which in turn leads to a smaller city government, which leads to a rejected application for Neighborhood Stabilization funds. It …

In Richard Florida’s new book The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, he dedicates Chapter 12 to “The Death and Life of Great Industrial Cities.” An excerpt from this chapter was recently published on a blog called the Urbanphile.
In this chapter, Florida explores the notion of “shrinking cities” and considers what kinds of policy need to be implemented to address this phenomenon. Essentially, he boils it down to the following question:
Should public policy toward hard-pressed, economically strapped cities focus on people, not just by …

The Goshen Redevelopment Commission of Goshen, Indiana has approved a new plan to reuse their vacant properties. This plan would create a temporary “Economic Revitalization Area,” and individuals or companies interested in putting vacant properties located within this area back to productive use would qualify for  a tax break. “The plan, as proposed, would allow the Goshen City Council to approve tax phase-ins for any building that’s been empty for more than a year where new operations are starting, said Larry Barkes, city attorney.”
This initiative represents yet another way cities …