This book explores the consequences of change in the urban form, the amalgam of the urban space and buildings and on the processes leading to planning and design. Urban form and its fabric result from a multitude of individual interests, ideas and decisions which in turn result in specific and locally diverse spatial arrangements. These processes which are shaping our built environment are embedded in and determined by different contexts of political, cultural and social-economic norms and values. Urban development and the transformation of urban structures are triggered by technological innovations, laws and taxes, new behaviors or the impact of environmental conditions as well as other factors. Based on case studies from Egypt and the Middle East, together with some cases from Germany and Turkey, this book covers a wide range of change processes focused on historic and inner city districts.

Since the 1950s and the advance of urban renewal, local governments and urban policy have focused heavily on the central business district. However, such development has all but ignored the inner-city neighborhoods that continue to struggle in the shadows of high-rise America. This analysis of urban neighborhoods in the United States from 1960 to 1995 presents fifteen essays by scholars of urban planning and development. Together they show how urban neighborhoods can and must be preserved as economic, cultural, and political centers.

Following decades of neglect and decline, many US cities have undergone a dramatic renaissance. From New York to Nashville and Pittsburgh to Portland governments have implemented innovative redevelopment strategies to adapt to a globally integrated, post-industrial economy and cope with declining industries, tax bases, and populations. However, despite the prominence of new amenities in revitalized neighborhoods, spectacular architectural icons, and pedestrian friendly entertainment districts, the urban comeback has been highly uneven. Even thriving cities are defined by a bifurcated population of creative class professionals and a low-wage, low-skilled workforce. Many are home to diverse and thriving immigrant communities, but also contain economically and socially segregated neighborhoods. They have transformed high-profile central city brownfields, but many disadvantaged neighborhoods continue to grapple with abandoned and environmentally contaminated sites. As urban cores boom, inner-ring suburban areas increasingly face mounting problems, while other shrinking cities continue to wrestle with long-term decline. The Great Recession brought additional challenges to planning and development professionals and community organizations alike as they work to maintain successes and respond to new problems. It is crucial that students of urban revitalization recognize these challenges, their impacts on different populations, and the implications for crafting effective and equitable revitalization policy. Urban Revitalization: Remaking Cities in a Changing World will be a guide in this learning process. This textbook will be the first to comprehensively and critically synthesize the successful approaches and pressing challenges involved in urban revitalization. The book is divided into five sections. In the introductory section, we set the stage by providing a conceptual framework to understand urban revitalization that links a political economy perspective with an appreciation of socio-cultural factors in explaining urban change. Stemming from this, we will explain the significance of revitalization and present a summary of the key debates, issues and conflicts surrounding revitalization efforts. Section II will examine the historical causes for decline in central city and inner-ring suburban areas and shrinking cities and, building from the conceptual framework, discuss theory useful to explain the factors that shape contemporary revitalization initiatives and outcomes. Section III will introduce students to the analytical techniques and key data sources for urban revitalization planning. Section IV will provide an in-depth, criticaldiscussion of contemporary urban revitalization policies, strategies, and projects. This section will offer a rich set of case studies that contextualize key themes and strategic areas across a range of contexts including the urban core, central city neighborhoods, suburban areas, and shrinking cities. Lastly, Section V concludes by reflecting on the current state of urban revitalization planning and the emerging challenges the field must face in the future. Urban Revitalization will integrate academic and policy research with professional knowledge and techniques. Its key strength will be the combination of a critical examination of best practices and innovative approaches with an overview of the methods used to understand local situations and urban revitalization processes. A unique feature will be chapter-specific case studies of contemporary urban revitalization projects and questions geared toward generatingclassroom discussion around key issues. The book will be written in an accessible style and thoughtfully organized to provide graduate and upper-level undergraduate students with a comprehensive resource that will also serve as a reference guide for professionals

For decades, North American cities racked by deindustrialization and population loss have followed one primary path in their attempts at revitalization: a focus on economic growth in downtown and business areas. Neighborhoods, meanwhile, have often been left severely underserved. There are, however, signs of change. This collection of studies by a distinguished group of political scientists and urban planning scholars offers a rich analysis of the scope, potential, and ramifications of a shift still in progress. Focusing on neighborhoods in six cities—Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Toronto—the authors show how key players, including politicians and philanthropic organizations, are beginning to see economic growth and neighborhood improvement as complementary goals. The heads of universities and hospitals in central locations also find themselves facing newly defined realities, adding to the fluidity of a new political landscape even as structural inequalities exert a continuing influence. While not denying the hurdles that community revitalization still faces, the contributors ultimately put forth a strong case that a more hospitable local milieu can be created for making neighborhood policy. In examining the course of experiences from an earlier period of redevelopment to the present postindustrial city, this book opens a window on a complex process of political change and possibility for reform.

In many American cities, middle and upper income people are moving into neighborhoods that had previously suffered disinvestment and decay. The new residents renovate housing, stimulate business, and contribute to the tax base. These benefits of neighborhood revitalization are, in some cases, achieved at a potentially serious cost: the displacement of existing neighborhood residents by eviction, condominium conversion, or as a result of rent increases. Revitalizing America’s Cities investigates the reasons why the affluent move into revitalizing inner-city neighborhoods and the ways in which the new residents benefit the city. It also examines the resulting displaced households. Data are presented on displacement in nine revitalizing neighborhoods of five cities — the most comprehensive survey of displaced households conducted to date. The study reveals characteristics of displaced households and hardships encountered as a result of being forced from their homes. Also featured is an examination of federal, state, and local policies toward neighborhood reinvestment and displacement, including various alternative approaches for dealing with this issue.

In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach presents a detailed picture of what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He spotlights these changes while placing them in their larger economic, social and political context. Most importantly, he explores the pervasive significance of race in American cities, and looks closely at the successes and failures of city governments, nonprofit entities, and citizens as they have tried to address the challenges of change. The Divided City concludes with strategies to foster greater equality and opportunity, firmly grounding them in the cities' economic and political realities.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize In twenty-first-century America, some cities are flourishing and others are struggling, but they all must contend with deteriorating infrastructure, economic inequality, and unaffordable housing. Cities have limited tools to address these problems, and many must rely on the private market to support the public good. It wasn’t always this way. For almost three decades after World War II, even as national policies promoted suburban sprawl, the federal government underwrote renewal efforts for cities that had suffered during the Great Depression and the war and were now bleeding residents into the suburbs. In Saving America’s Cities, the prizewinning historian Lizabeth Cohen follows the career of Edward J. Logue, whose shifting approach to the urban crisis tracked the changing balance between government-funded public programs and private interests that would culminate in the neoliberal rush to privatize efforts to solve entrenched social problems. A Yale-trained lawyer, rival of Robert Moses, and sometime critic of Jane Jacobs, Logue saw renewing cities as an extension of the liberal New Deal. He worked to revive a declining New Haven, became the architect of the “New Boston” of the 1960s, and, later, led New York State’s Urban Development Corporation, which built entire new towns, including Roosevelt Island in New York City. Logue’s era of urban renewal has a complicated legacy: Neighborhoods were demolished and residents dislocated, but there were also genuine successes and progressive goals. Saving America’s Cities is a dramatic story of heartbreak and destruction but also of human idealism and resourcefulness, opening up possibilities for our own time.