Youngstown, taking the shrinking city syndrome head on

[UrbaniDesDev]

I saw this article in Metropolis Magazine and thought it was an interesting approach to the problems of a shrinking city. Youngstown is a part of the Pittsburgh region so I felt it relevant

Last year Youngstown 2010-a partnership between the city

[globalburgh]

Popper has done a lot of work understanding the population decline in the Plains Region of the United States:

Popper Studies Plains

[globalburgh]

Some interesting stuff here:

Reviving Dying Towns

[UrbaniDesDev]

There was some great facts in your links global.

Thank you.

I liked this statement

This report contends that the economic future of a major rust belt state depends on revitalizing its demographic mix and curbing some of the nation's most radical patterns of sprawl and abandonment. Above all, the study reveals that Pennsylvania's highly decentralized growth patterns are weakening the state's established communities, undercutting the very places whose assets the state needs to compete in the knowledge economy. Ultimately, the report concludes that these trends are not inevitable, and can be reshaped if the state embraces a dynamic new vision of economic competitiveness that links the Commonwealth's desire for prosperity to the need to revive older cities and towns.

[globalburgh]

Good eye. That analysis resonates with me as well. My take is that Pittsburgh needs to look ahead to the emerging knowledge economy instead of playing catch up with the exploding Sun Belt cities.

I see the Mon Valley as the best prospect in the Pittsburgh Region. There is an interesting piece in the Spring/Summer edition of Pittsburgh Quarterly (very new magazine and worth a look), "3 places that found redemption: Can Pittsburgh?", by Mark Desantis. Tim Zak (Pittsburgh Social Enterprise Accelerator) noted that there are not enough "like-minded people" to redeem Pittsburgh, but the main point is that Pittsburgh is doing just enough to limp along. Serious renewel tends to take hold in places of utter disaster.

That's the Mon Valley in a nutshell. These are the cities and towns I would revive.