Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival

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Grogan, Paul S., and Tony Proscio. Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. This book’s inclusion of the achievements of community development corporations (CDCs) is one of its best features. CDCs are certainly important entities in modern American cities, and they demonstrate how thinking outside the lines can have significant results. The authors are correct in pointing out the importance of big business’ embrace of the inner city as a growth opportunity. Grocery stores, drug stores, and other retailers are moving into the central cities, improving the look of the landscape (in some ways), and providing services long absent from these areas. Comeback Cities also investigates the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that requires every bank to extend its services to the entire community it serves, including less than wealthy neighborhoods. In the era of large-scale bank consolidation, the act pushed banks to become more responsible neighbors or risk the disapproval of desired mergers. This pro-cities legislation may have spurred greater investment in nontraditional areas, yet the changes may have also stemmed from business’ late realization that poor neighborhoods can also be profitable ones. (Text adapted from an H-Net review by Lisa Krissoff Boehm.)