Spotlight Vol. 9, No. 1: Book Review - Learning from Urban Strategies

By L. Nicolas Ronderos, Director of Urban Development Programs, RPA

Fixing Broken Cities: The Implementation of Urban Development Strategies by John Kromer, Routledge, 2010

For many people, their most frequent exposure to the desolation that still occupies many of our great Northeastern cities comes from riding the train between New York and Washington. Between these two great national capitals, one financial and one political, lie Philadelphia, Baltimore, Wilmington, Trenton, and smaller cities like Camden, all cities that are struggling in degrees and in parts to find their way in an age that put less value on their offerings than in the past. To a rider on the train, the starkest sight is that of thousands of abandoned and empty apartment buildings, commodities that are so sought after in the pricey urban centers but virtually worthless in these places. The natural and obvious question is why did this happen, and what should we do about it?

John Kromer, in his new book Fixing Broken Cities, asks and answers those questions, and to a large degree successfully. Kromer, who recently served as Interim Director of the Camden Redevelopment Agency and, prior to that, served for eight years as Director of the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Housing and Community Development, has direct experience working in these places that have been left behind in this age of urban success stories. It makes for a fascinating read and a cogent insider’s view of the day-to-day and policymaking activities of urban development strategies. Overall, this book is a tour de force about planning efforts and their impact in postindustrial urban downtowns and residential communities.

Kromer organizes his work as a series of case studies that document different projects in Philadelphia, Camden, and Allentown, PA. The first seven chapters focus on Philadelphia: the City’s ten-year tax abatement, the formation of a business-led downtown management organization, the build-out of largely abandoned sections of Eastern North Philadelphia, Mayor John Street’s citywide neighborhood revitalization policy, a citywide revitalization policy called Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), the creation of a high quality new public school as part of a University neighborhood investment program, and an attempt to convert a vacant fire station into a neighborhood retail center.

The next two chapters focus on Kromer’s management of the Camden Redevelopment agency, describing a municipal reform effort and the approach for revitalizing a downtown-area neighborhood in the city. Finally the book describes efforts to maintain the quality and condition of rental housing in Allentown, PA.

On top of enjoying and learning from the multiple projects and initiatives profiled in the book, with all the déjà vu moments that are similar to my own life working in urban issues, I find a couple of Kromer's lessons very important, and which parallel my own experience:

First is the fact that to work successfully in urban development today means recognizing that we live in a post-industrial era. With depopulation and off-shoring of production activities, this postindustrial reality affects us all, and identifying it as the major problem will ensure that policies, projects, and programs are poised to address population and economic loss.

Second is the reminder that we are working in a post urban renewal era. As Kromer suggests, we are still trying to find a full and rounded replacement to the top down era of planning, and although we have made enormous advances in public participation and more bottom-up planning, we still need to institutionalize these efforts.

Finally and most importantly is Kromer’s suggestion that the most effective urban strategies are all related to a single question: Who should benefit? Allocation of public capital, social benefits, and new developments needs to focus on answering this pressing question and to make sure it guides every urban development strategy to address the needs at hand in each situation.

I recommend this book highly to anyone looking for a way to navigate our older, struggling cities into a brighter urban future.