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 encouraging retraining but also by helping them relocate to places with a better job market? Or should policies focus on places, by fostering geographically targeted reinvestment?

Florida’s answer to this question? “Put people first.” Essentially, he thinks that people need to be able to move to more economically viable areas when their own cities are suffering. As Florida says, “The sad but unavoidable fact is that overall, and with few exceptions, places in the United States and in other advanced nations where the regional economies are based on blue-collar industries are headed for trouble.” Headed for trouble? This statement should read “are in trouble.” This is because the “blue-collar industries” he refers to have been tremendously downsized (just think about the steel and auto industries). But even though places like Pittsburgh, PA, Birmingham, AL, Trenton, NJ, and Cleveland, OH (to name just a few, check out the maps on this site for even more cities) have suffered as a result of de-industrialization, this does not mean that these cities don’t have anything to offer. There are other reasons that people choose to stay in these cities–they aren’t all “stuck” in these cities.

Dan Kildee, President and Co-Founder of the Center for Community Progress and former Genessee County Treasurer, underscored this point at a recent conference hosted by the Cleveland + Youngstown + Pittsburgh Regional Network: he said, “These cities are too important to those who live there and deserve more.” This is why investing in places is so important and why by investing in these places, you would be putting people first.

With that being said, he has a valid point in saying that, “Instead of spending millions to lure or bail out factories, or hundreds of millions and in some cases billions to build stadiums, convention centers, and hotels, use that money to invest in local assets, spur local business formation and development, better employ local people and utilize their skills, and invest in improving quality of place.” Agreed. However, Florida leaves out one vital aspect: these cities need resources to carry out all of his recommendations. How can they “invest in improving quality of place” when there is not funding to do this and even when there is funding, resources are much too scarce to address the long term population loss and disinvestment that have afflicted these cities for the past forty years? This is precisely why legislation like the Community Regeneration, Sustainability, and Innovation Act of 2009 is so important: it provides resources for these cities to develop place based plans to address their challenges.

Click here to read the excerpt from Florida’s new book.