An Urban Revival in the Rust Belt

Long-suffering Buffalo, along with other Rust Belt cities hit with the double whammy of the New Economy and the Great Recession, is coming back. And local politicians and urban experts say these cities are in a historic renaissance that belies the late-20th-century presumption that industrial America was finished. Urban expert Alan Mallach calls them "Legacy Cities" – cities whose workers helped build this country that are now struggling their way back decades after the New Economy took hold.

"This is the American heartland. This is where 'what made our country great' all began," says Mallach, senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. "You look at these cities today, and they are struggling, but at the same time they have incredible assets and have incredible resources for this country."

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Experts say affordable housing, a slew of new investments in growing fields and stable workforces have put places like Buffalo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh back on the map for both new college grads and Rust Belt natives who left to find work but feel a tug back to the homefront.

"What has happened in the last seven years in Buffalo is that it has regained the confidence it lost after many decades of economic decline," says Rep. Brian Higgins, a South Buffalo Democrat who for many years has fought to develop the city's waterfront from an industrial dumping site into a festive and bustling gathering place.

When things are looking gloomy, "people retreat unto themselves, they become very territorial and don't embrace the larger vision," making it harder to accept fundamental changes in the economy, adds Higgins, who also taught a course on the western New York economy at SUNY Buffalo State.

"What's changed is that people are seeing tangible proof" that things are on the upswing, he says.

And it's not just Buffalo. Cleveland, too, is getting back on the A-list. The Republican National Committee picked the Ohio city for its 2016 convention – and it wasn't a political decision aimed at wooing swing-state Ohio voters, RNC chairman Reince Priebus said; it was a business decision. Architecturally charming downtown Cleveland now has an apartment occupancy rate in the mid- to upper 90 percent range, as young people look to the city as a hip place to live. Basketball great LeBron James is coming back to play for the NBA's Cavaliers. One of Cleveland's bigger worries stems from an embarrassment of riches: What if James takes the Cavs to the NBA playoffs in 2016 and the team needs the stadium during the RNC convention?

"They've done a great job revitalizing downtown, expanding and turning former office buildings into apartments," says Jon Snyder, who was born in Cleveland and has returned to launch Neuros Medical, a medical device startup.

Cleveland's move from an industrial city to an innovation city attracts well-educated young people, Snyder says, adding that he is getting résumés from all over the country. Cleveland's old manufacturing base, along with such boast-worthy universities as Case Western Reserve, have created a solid new base for medical research and devices as well as other innovation-related enterprises, he says.

Pittsburgh, which probably recovered from the decline of the steel industry better than other cities, is seeing another rise, specialists say. A spring study by global property firm Grosvenor ranked Pittsburgh the fifth-best city in the world for long-term real estate investment, a distinction the report noted marks Pittsburgh's "resilience."

The city, built on innovations from industrialist Andrew Carnegie and others, tended to lose the young people educated at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon because there were not jobs for them upon graduation. Now, says Tim McNulty, communications manager for Mayor William Peduto, the city is working with universities to keep new grads in town with job opportunities. Google recently built an office on the outskirts of Larimer, a struggling neighborhood. The company is also building another office to attract more talent, McNulty says.

All three cities have followed a similar path: They've developed their waterfronts, appealing to young people, and they've also fostered new areas of industry, especially centered around the growing health and medical research arena. Buffalo is getting the new Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, a $375 million facility set to open in 2016. Pittsburgh's old U.S. Steel Tower is now adorned with the name of UPMC, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

It's all about seeing a city as an "orchestra" in which "the whole is more important than the parts," says Manny Diaz, former mayor of Miami, Florida, and author of "Miami Transformed." It's not enough to simply attract businesses with tax breaks, which don't even rank highly in companies' decisions to move to an area, Diaz says. All the things that make a city appealing must come together at once: safe streets, nice parks, a good music and arts scene, strong schools and jobs.

"They key, at the end of the day, is people. The question is, how do you get people to move back into the city?" says Diaz, a former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

"Water is magic," Diaz adds, since it can serve as a social and commercial center for a city.

But it's hard for mayors who are facing so many pressing life-and-death needs, such as police presence and basic infrastructure repair, to spend meager tax dollars on a waterfront project, he says.

"It takes great courage and great political will and some investment," Diaz notes. "If the city is in decay and everything is going down, you don't have as much revenue to do a river walk. You've got pressing needs: If crime is up, do you hire more cops, or plant 42 more trees? These are the considerations you have to make."

That balance can be tough, and in Legacy Cities like troubled Detroit, the effort has been painful and slow, Mallach notes. The decline of the automobile industry continues to beleaguer the city, which is now under emergency management. But Mallach says he is hopeful and that decision-makers in the Motor City now understand its problems and are determined to fix them. And even Buffalo, Cleveland and Pittsburgh are still healing. But now, for the first time in decades, they're hip.