Did Central Cities Come Back? Which Ones, How Far, and Why?

Abstract

Much has been made of the revival of distressed cities during the 1990s, yet how much of this asserted revival really worked its way down to residents? We find that residents of distressed central cities were generally worse off in 2000 than in 1980. We construct an index of the economic well-being of central city residents for the 98 central cities that had at least 125,000 residents in 1980 with metropolitan area populations of at least 250,000. We then compare the change in the economic well-being of residents of the 33 cities with the lowest index scores in 1980 against (1) their own performance over this time period, (2) the performance of the 65 non-distressed central cities, and (3) the performance of the nation. In the third section we build regression models of change in the index and of each index component to determine what explains the change in economic well-being of city residents.

Economic Distress and Resurgence in U.S. Central Cities

“…South Bend barely made the cutoff for moderate resident economic well-being in 2000, according to Furdell and Wolman (2006), and had weak economic growth during the 1990s (see Table 5). 24 Furdell, Wolman, and Hill (2005) found that, on the whole, economic conditions in the distressed cities were further behind those of nondistressed cities in 2000 than they had been in 1980. Among those in the KM sample, one-half showed both deterioration in resident economic well-being and declines in city population between 1980 and 2000 (Table 5).…”

“…For the KM sample, all of the cities that were identified as distressed in 1980 remained distressed in 2000. 17 For the entire sample of 98 cities in Furdell, Wolman, and Hill (2005), the correlation between the distress indexes in 1980 and those in 2000 was 0.86. Wolman, Ford, and Hill (1994) and Furdell, Wolman, and Hill (2005) Winston-Salem (NC) was added to the analysis as a nondistressed city in 1990.…”

“…An additional study by Furdell, Wolman, and Hill (2005) used a similar methodology to quantify the likelihood of recovery and find determinants of success between 1980 and 2000.…”

Economic Distress and Resurgence in U.S. Central Cities: Concepts, Causes, and Policy Levers

“…An additional study by Furdell, Wolman, and Hill (2005) The studies by Wolman, Ford, and Hill (1994) and Wolman, Hill, and Furdell (2004) addressed the degree to which improvements in central business districts benefited city residents. In each of these studies, the authors queried economic development experts about the degree of revitalization in approximately 50 cities whose population had either decreased or increased only modestly one decade earlier and whose residents had had a low level of economic well-being 10 years earlier.…”

Residential mobility in East and West Germany: mobility rates, mobility reasons, reurbanization

“…There are controversial discussions nowadays about reurbanization in Germany, yet such trends are observed in other industrialized countries as well, particularly in the United States, where trends of "urban revival" or of "urban comeback" have been identifi ed for the 1990s (cf . Fishman 2005;Furdell et al 2005). A closer look at the different trends and concepts (also: urban renaissance, urban resurgence, urban turnaround) shows bewildering variations fi rst of distinguishing features ranging from population growth, job growth to growth of housing or new attractiveness of density and urban life.…”