This collection evaluates the various strategies that different cities have used when attempting to economically revitalize downtown areas.

This collection evaluates the various strategies that different cities have used when attempting to economically revitalize downtown areas.

This report examines the unique challenges of smaller American legacy cities -- older industrial centers with populations of less than 200,000, located primarily in the Midwest and Northeast. These cities are critical sites for a number of global economic and demographic transformations, and must fundamentally reconsider how to rebuild and sustain strong economies, housing markets, and workforces. This report identifies replicable strategies that have assisted smaller legacy cities weather these transformations, find their competitive edge, and transform into thriving, sustainable communities.

This study of rural small towns in the final quarter of the twentieth century is an example of futures research, a technology assessment, and a policy analysis. As futures research, it tries to sum up long-range trends affecting rural small towns and their potential functions in a period when the nation is making a sometimes difficult transition into post-industrial society. As a technology assessment, the study is concerned with the role which transportation has played, and will play, in the vitality, growth, or decline of rural communities and the quality of life experienced by their residents. Technology assessment is a subset of the larger field of policy research and analysis. The study is intended to inform and support the process of formulation of transportation policy as it relates to small towns and rural areas.

This study offers a way to think about the regeneration of America's legacy cities -- older industrial cities that have experienced sustained job and population loss over the past few decades. It argues that regeneration is grounded in the cities' abilities to find new forms. These include not only new physical forms that reflect the changing economy and social fabric, but also new forms of export-oriented economic activity, new models of governance and leadership, and new ways to build stronger regional and metropolitan relationships. The report also identifies the powerful obstacles that stand in the way of fundamental change, and suggests directions by which cities can overcome those obstacles and embark on the path of regeneration.