Managing Capital Resources for Central City Revitalization

Much has been done since the end of the second world war to revitalize central cities. Some efforts have been piecemeal and haphazard (such as urban renewal) while others have been qualified successes (such as urban development action grants). Since 1980, however, the federal government has distanced itself from its role as benefactor to America's central cities. Urban mayors made up for drastically reduced federal and state funding by offering tax incentives (such as tax abatements and tax increment finance districts) to attract industry. Through such incentives many central cities, especially between 1982 and 1988, rebuilt their downtowns. The economic recession of 1989, however, put an end to this commercial opportunity. In contrast to these well-worn incentives, however, there are a small number of locally-based revitalization experiments which have been all but overlooked in the literature. This is possibly because they have not been formally supported by Washington. In this book we examine three revitalization experiments: TOADS, Business Improvement Dist