Nothing Left to Lose

Cities have not been forgotten by their regional economies; rather, all too often, the opposite has happened. Distressed central cities have not, or perhaps cannot, react to changes in their current competitive positions within their regional economies. Edward W. Hill is a nonresident senior fellow in the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and a senior research scholar in Cleveland State University's Levin College of Urban Affairs. He is the editor of Economic Development Quarterly. Jeremy Nowak is president of The Reinvestment Fund, a financial intermediary specializing in inner-city real estate and small business lending. Partial for their research was provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Surdna Foundation.