How Cities Respond To Losing Population

Cities faced with losing population engage in novel marketing techniques to lure back residents. "Marketing a city is really like selling a product, it turns out, and civic leaders must think like businessmen...Pittsburgh is advertising itself as a welcoming, friendly place for foreign immigrants to relocate. Washington, D.C., seeks 100,000 new residents by building affordable housing and improving city schools. Baltimore recently placed ads in Washington's Spanish-language publications trying to lure the city's Latinos 40 miles to the north. The mayor of Cleveland wants the Ohio city's population to exceed the 500,000 mark by 2010, and is focusing on jobs, education and public safety. And the mayor of Schenectady, N.Y., has garnered attention recently by traveling to New York City and personally asking Guyanese immigrants to move upstate into vacant houses in his depressed city."