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In Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities, a 2013 report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Alan Mallach and Lavea Brachman posit that the surest way to revitalize legacy cities is through strategic incrementalism-or “melding a long-term strategic vision with an incremental process for change.” Establishing a path for success, they suggest, requires a shared community vision for the city’s future and sustained efforts by local leaders to further that long-range view. Smaller legacy cities often lack major corporate headquarters or significant anchor institutions, assets that have been leveraged successfully in larger cities, meaning that even proven strategies will require creative adaptation in places like Camden, New Jersey, or Youngstown, Ohio. While researchers and community leaders have identified strategies to revitalize places like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, less attention has been paid to how these approaches might transfer to communities like Dayton, Ohio, or Binghamton, New York. In national conversations, they frequently fall under the shadow of their larger counterparts. With traditional economies built around manufacturing and populations that peaked in the 20th century then declined to 30,000 to 200,000, America’s small to midsize legacy cities are found nationwide but concentrated most heavily in New England and the Great Lakes region, from Gary, Indiana, to Lowell, Massachusetts (figure 1). Yet as the national economy has transitioned away from manufacturing, many of these communities have struggled with entrenched poverty, neighborhood disinvestment, and a workforce with skills that do not match employers’ needs. Places like Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Worcester, Massachusetts, created job opportunities that enabled massive numbers of rural migrants and foreign immigrants to achieve a comfortable life through relatively low-skilled work. Strong local leadership, a shared community vision, inclusive growth, creative problem solving, cross-sector collaboration, and placemaking are all important ingredients for success in America’s smaller legacy cities.įor generations, these industrial centers were essential to building American middle-class prosperity.