Unlocking the Economic Potential of Post-Industrial Cities provides a roadmap for how urban policy makers, community members, and practitioners in the public and private sector can work together with researchers to discover how all cities can solve the most pressing modern urban challenges.

Philadelphia is a patchwork of the political and economic changes dating back to 1683. Having been re-created repeatedly, each era of the city's development includes elements of the past. In this book, the authors describe the city's evolution into a post-industrial metropolis of old communities and newly expended neighborhoods, in which remnants of 19th-century industries can be seen in today's residential areas. This book explores a wide range of issues impacting upon Philadelphia's post-industrial economy--trends in housing and homelessness, the business community, job distribution, a disintegrating political structure, and increased racial, class, and neighborhood conflict. The authors examine the growth of the service sector, the disparity in the city's urban renewal program that has enriched center city but left most neighborhoods in need, and they evaluate the realistic prospects for regional solutions to some of the problems facing Philadelphia and its suburbs. Author note: Carolyn Adams teaches in the Geography and Urban Studies Department at Temple University. David Bartelt teaches at the Institute for Public Policy Studies at Temple University. David Elesh is Professor of Sociology, Temple University. Ira Goldstein teaches at the Institute for Public Policy Studies, Temple University. Nancy Kleniewski teaches Sociology at State University of New York, Geneseo. William Yancey is Professor of Sociology, Temple University.

The fourth report of the Temple-Penn Philadelphia Economic Monitoring Project continues the work of the Wharton Philadelphia Economic Monitoring Project, which began in 1984. This volume examines the manufacturing and service industries that have experienced employment growth in the region. Through detailed analysis of changes in the quantity, quality, and location of employment for specific industries in manufacturing, in producer services, in health care services, and in research and development activities, the authors explain why industries grew and asses their potential for further expansion.

What prevents cities whose economies have been devastated by the flight of human and monetary capital from returning to self-sufficiency? Looking at the cumulative effects of urban decline in the classic post-industrial city of Camden, New Jersey, historian Howard Gillette, Jr., probes the interaction of politics, economic restructuring, and racial bias to evaluate contemporary efforts at revitalization. In a sweeping analysis, Gillette identifies a number of related factors to explain this phenomenon, including the corrosive effects of concentrated poverty, environmental injustice, and a political bias that favors suburban amenity over urban reconstruction. Challenging popular perceptions that poor people are responsible for the untenable living conditions in which they find themselves, Gillette reveals how the effects of political decisions made over the past half century have combined with structural inequities to sustain and prolong a city's impoverishment. Even the most admirable efforts to rebuild neighborhoods through community development and the reinvention of downtowns as tourist destinations are inadequate solutions, Gillette argues. He maintains that only a concerted regional planning response—in which a city and suburbs cooperate—is capable of achieving true revitalization. Though such a response is mandated in Camden as part of an unprecedented state intervention, its success is still not assured, given the legacy of outside antagonism to the city and its residents. Deeply researched and forcefully argued, Camden After the Fall chronicles the history of the post-industrial American city and points toward a sustained urban revitalization strategy for the twenty-first century.

In nearly all OECD countries, the labour market has been in flux in recent decades. This book examines the labour markets and the institutional frameworks that condition their functioning in four different countries: Canada, the United States, Denmark and Sweden. Through a comparative study of these cases, the book discusses the nation-specific patterns that exist in a world that seems to become increasingly subject to common social and economic development.

Contesting claims that postwar American liberalism retreated from fights against unemployment and economic inequality, The Problem of Jobs reveals that such efforts did not collapse after the New Deal but instead began to flourish at the local, rather than the national, level. With a focus on Philadelphia, this volume illuminates the central role of these local political and policy struggles in shaping the fortunes of city and citizen alike. In the process, it tells the remarkable story of how Philadelphia’s policymakers and community activists energetically worked to challenge deindustrialization through an innovative series of job retention initiatives, training programs, inner-city business development projects, and early affirmative action programs. Without ignoring the failure of Philadelphians to combat institutionalized racism, Guian McKee's account of their surprising success draws a portrait of American liberalism that evinces a potency not usually associated with the postwar era. Ultimately interpreting economic decline as an arena for intervention rather than a historical inevitability, The Problem of Jobs serves as a timely reminder of policy’s potential to combat injustice.

This SpringerBriefs presents a case study and theoretical analysis of an artistic enclave that emerged within Lawrenceville Pittsburgh. It briefly describes the history of greater Pittsburgh, and Lawrenceville’s transition from thriving blue-collar community to depopulated low-income neighborhood to gentrifying site of artistic and creative culture. It draws on multiple methods (e.g., interviews, observations, and survey data) to discuss the advantages and disadvantages associated with being a Pittsburgh artist, and offer a detailed description of the origins and ongoing development of Lawrenceville’s artistic enclave. It discusses this enclave in the context of sociological, historical, and interdisciplinary work on urban artistic communities (i.e., bohemian and quasi-bohemian communities), and situates it within the larger urban artistic tradition, and within its contemporary urban context. It maintains that this enclave constitutes a successful (i.e., sustainable) example of an artistic creative class enclave, a heuristic concept that clarifies and amends Richard Florida’s brief commentary on contemporary urban artistic life. It concludes by offering policy suggestions for those who wish to promote such enclaves, and a preliminary critical appraisal of their potential impact on society.