Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization: Lessons For France From Three U.S. Cities

Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization
Lessons for France from Three U.S. Cities
Celine Gipoulon
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About the Author
Celine Gipoulon is a former project manager at the French National Agency for Urban Regeneration and was a 2013-14 Urban and
Regional Policy Fellow.
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On the cover: Pittsburgh bridges C. Gipoulon.
Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization

Lessons for France from Three U.S. Cities
Celine Gipoulon
June 2015
CONTENTS

Introduction 1
A Rising Interest for the U.S. Context
1
Bringing Lessons Back to France
1
Methodology 2
Overview of the Situation in France and the Interest in the Legacy City Examples
The PNRU: An Ambitious Public Policy but Limited Results in Certain Fields
Focusing on the United States: Why and How?
3
3
6
Three Neighborhood Revitalization Initiatives in the Rust Belt

Old North St. Louis: A Strong Community Organization
University Circle Cleveland: A Strong Foundation, Some Committed Partners
East Liberty Pittsburgh: A Strong Broad-Based City Leadership
11
11
18
25
Key Factors of the Rust Belt Approach: What are the Lessons for France?
Strengthening Community Organization in France
Developing Multi-Actor Place-Based Strategies
Establishing Philanthropic Organizations
Targeting (Channeling) Private Money to Neighborhood Needs
Preserving City-Wide Strategies
33
33
37
39
41
44
Conclusion 47
References 49
List of Interviews
51
Tax Incentive Mechanisms
53
Introduction
n early 2013, when I applied for GMFs

Urban and Regional Policy Fellowship, the
10-year term of the National Program of
Urban Revitalization (PNRU) of the French
National Government that I was working for
was winding down and was subject to evaluation in order to continue.
predominance of public actors among the partnerships and funding sources were considered potential flaws. If these two factors are
improved, the relationship between physical
transformation and socioeconomic change
could also be stronger.
ways that community-based initiatives and

private-sector dynamics could take over moved
into the spotlight. I realized these kinds of cities
had resources that we do not have in France,
despite lacking many things French cities enjoy
such as major public investment.
Since it was established in 2003, the PNRU

had embodied an ambitious public policy
toward neighborhood revitalization: massive
public investment, shared between national
and local levels in order to drastically change
the quality of life in disadvantaged neighborhoods all over the country. I spent three years
there as a program manager, a go-between
between the national board and the other
municipal staff and elected officials in charge
of the programs implementation. In this role,
I interacted with dozens of different cities and
many different types of actors, studied the
partnerships they were able to create, and
observed the way local communities were
considered and involved in the process.
A Rising Interest for the U.S. Context
Bringing Lessons Back to France
The comparative approach to urban policy is

not a new field. Many French sociologists and
political scientists have looked abroad in the
last 15 years, focusing mainly on the notion
of empowerment. But as the time for reform
came, new government strategists took a
deeper interest in this type of research. Nonetheless, practical research exploring how U.S.
best practices could be adapted to the French
context was still limited, and it was suggested
that there should be more comparative analysis in this area.1
Largely because of an increasing shortage

of public funding, the ways other resources
(human, technical, and financial) can be
successfully mobilized are of major interest
to French practitioners and policymakers.
This mobilization could help introduce new
processes in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, not only in terms of physical
improvement but socially and economically
as well, and in terms of civic involvement.
My assumption was that an evolution toward
bottom-up and more inclusive partnerships
would help French agencies improve the
socioeconomic impact of their policies.
As the program ended, a series of evaluations

and reports examined how to pursue this
public policy with better results. The main
assessment was that great physical transformations had been achieved but that the overall
socioeconomic impact in targeted neighborhoods was insufficient. Both the programs
top-down process meant that national, state,
and local governments collaborated to shape
the choices for neighborhoods, and the
As I became more interested in U.S. examples, I

was struck by the wide range of non-traditional
actors and funders listed in U.S. revitalization
projects assets analysis. These kinds of local
tailor-made solutions are much more developed than in France. Meanwhile, the mainstream media had taken a growing interest in
the situation of Detroit, Michigan. As the citys
decline led to a bankruptcy in July 2013, the
1 Politiques de la Ville et Rnovation urbaine: perspectives internationales (Urban Policies and Urban Revitalization: international
perspectives) Symposium by the Centre dAnalyse Stratgique,
think-tank of the prime minister December 12, 2012
I decided to focus my research on the tools for

innovative, locally based public-private partnerships. My aim was to learn from three U.S.
case studies: Cleveland, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh. Do these partnerships rely entirely on
cultural conditions? And what does this kind of
planning or urban transformation look like?
Second, I sought to understand how these
lessons could be brought back to France.
Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization | 1
What would French cities be like if different

actors were empowered to plan the future
of their neighborhoods and cities? Do these
solutions only emerge when public authorities
fail to deal with the problems? Or are there
some patterns and conditions that could be
brought back to France?
Methodology
The research focuses on the participation
of community-based organizations, private
actors, and non-profit organizations in the
revitalization strategies of three neighborhoods. In order to learn more about how and
why such strategies work in practice, my study
addressed the following research questions:
How does the involvement of a diversity
of actors influence the project definition
and process?
What kind of governance facilitates a
participatory planning process and how
could this arrangement be put in place?
How do successful examples work at
different levels?
What tools encourage better dialogue
around public-private partnerships (PPP)
and crossed investments?
Which models are adaptable to France,
and, if so, under what conditions?
To answer these questions, I undertook a
one-year research project based on three case
studies, ones in which multiple actors are
working together in a participatory plan2 | The German Marshall Fund of the United States
ning process in a neighborhood, and where

the local communities have been especially
proactive in driving urban revitalization: Old
North St. in St. Louis, Missouri; University
Circle in Cleveland, Ohio; and East Liberty in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.2
As a 2014 urban and regional policy fellow,
I travelled several times to these three cities
between the fall of 2013 and spring of 2014.
I went to each city two to three times for
successive stays of generally 7 to 10 days. I
met with stakeholders directly involved in
the neighborhoods transformations (mostly
but not exclusively community-based organizations) and with other actors that were
involved in the cities affairs in general (city
planning commissions, foundations, etc.) or
revitalization dynamics in general (including
academics, private real estate developers, and
philanthropic foundations). The full list of
interviewees can be found in Appendix 1.
I focused on the project process, the partnerships and the form they took, the implications
for local communities, and the incentives used
to encourage diverse participation. Direct
conversations with different stakeholders
allowed me understand their interests, the
way they were involved in the process, and
the benefits they received from this involvement. Interviewees were also invited to talk
2 These neighborhoods have been defined on an empirical basis,
referring first to local perceptions. They do not necessarily rely on
political boundaries but they usually correspond to one or several
census tracts. It is worth noting that in the three cities, municipalities, universities, and tourist websites use these neighborhoods
limits and names.
about the transferability of their practice and

what they considered to be essential tools to
improve cities in general.
My methodology also included a brief review
of the literature about federal policies, legislative frameworks, institutional contexts, and
essential documentation about the chosen
sites. I wanted to deepen the analysis of
targeted mechanisms or tools in order to
study their applicability in France, beyond the
often-mentioned cultural differences, I also
reviewed writings by French sociologists and
political scientists about U.S. urban policies.
The exhaustive references can be found in
Appendix 2.
The report begins with an overview of the
main challenges of French urban policy and
the reasons why initiatives from so-called
legacy cities could be of interest.
The second section clarifies the different
processes in the three neighborhoods through
a detailed description of the initiatives: the
actors involved, their interaction, the strategy
they followed, and their results. Each initiative is illustrated with the example of a key
ongoing or completed program.
The third section summarizes the common
characteristics that account for the success
of the studied examples and explores the
conditions of their transferability in France.
Some targeted policy recommendations for
the French context and for the reform of the
PNRU are included.
Overview of the Situation in France and the Interest in the Legacy City Examples
he selection of three legacy cities may

appear like a paradoxical choice, as
their general physical condition can
be worse than that of French post-industrial
cities.3 Although many legacy city examples
do present some visible signs of success at
a neighborhood level, this research focuses
not on physical transformation but on the
processes that lead to new kind of solutions.
The United States is well known for its tradition
of empowerment. As legacy cities lost jobs and
major industries and their municipal governments were weakened, diverse actors have
stepped forward to initiate potentially transformative change. This is what makes them
interesting laboratories. In order to understand
which of these observations are transferable,
the following section explains the specifics of
the French system of urban policy.
The PNRU: An Ambitious Public Policy

but Limited Results in Certain Fields
The PNRU was launched in 2003 as a 10-year
program representing a new direction in
French urban policy. The objective was a
massive public investment, at both national
and local levels, to drastically change the
quality of life in disadvantaged neighborhoods
all over the country. Most of the program
3 In the U.S. context, legacy cities are cities that were once the
backbone of the United States industrial economy, but now face
significant social and economic issues following the sustained loss of
jobs and population. These cities are clustered in New England, the
Mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest.
targeted tower in the park style projects built

outside the city center and a few inner-city
neighborhoods. One of the main goals was
to turn these long-segregated neighborhoods
into ordinary ones through physical investments developing mixed-uses and mixed-income housing. The rationale was that many
of the handicaps residents experienced (e.g.,
low levels of education and high unemployment.) were accentuated by the isolation and
intensity of poverty they endured, and that
enhancing their environment and bringing
diversity would help reduce their difficulties.
Figure 1
Though the French government has articulated different types of urban policies since
the 1980s, this approach represents a rupture
in several respects: the unprecedented
amount of investment (13 billion of national
public subsidies, generating 42 billion
of global investment); the comprehensive
urban approach with a complete masterplan
required for each area; and a simultaneous
focus on hundreds of different neighborhoods
throughout the country for at least a five-year
period. Compared with past programs, all of
these were quite innovative and less heavily
dedicated to the physical transformation of
the neighborhoods.4
There are hundreds of concerned neighborhoods all around France.
4 Popular especially from the 1950s to the 1970s, these are

commonly defined as high rises built within long blocks and
surrounded by tracts of green space. They are associated with failed
public housing projects.
source: ANRU
While the PNRU has improved the living

conditions in several areas by transforming
affordable housing, developing new housing
units, offering new or renewed public amenities, and shifting road access, it has been less
successful in making the target areas more
economically and socially diverse and more
attractive for new residents, businesses, and
jobs. This may explain why their socioeconomic indicators have not improved within
the period. The program is commonly judged
first to be too top-down, and second to be
too publicly driven and publicly funded.
This suggests that if goals for residential and
economic diversity are not met, it might be
because other actors able to encourage such

dynamics are not involved in the right way.
In particular, the strategy has often been
compromised by the inability to fully engage
the non-public sector in the planning
process. It has become a priority for French
urban planners to explore new ideas or
approaches that might make our policies more
effective.
Figure 2
Physical Interventions with Limited

Leverage on Socioeconomic Indicators
In the PNRU, decision-making over which

neighborhoods to target was determined
by a host of socioeconomic data, including
unemployment rate, percentage of migrant
households and of young people, and level
of education. The PNRU was based on a
competitive grant for redevelopment projects
located in these areas with quite an exclusive
physical approach. Interventions on the built
environment have taken many different forms,
including housing rehabilitation and reconfiguration, demolition, transfers of landownership, and new developments dedicated to
housing, new business, and amenities. These
projects were supposed to bring more visitors,
residents, employers, and investors to these
long-segregated neighborhoods, which would
in turn transform them into mixed-used and
mixed-income areas with new economic
opportunities while pushing their socioeconomic indicators closer to their cities average
rates.
Basic framework of the PNRU organization (2003-2013)
At the same time, another program run by

another public agency (ACSE Agence pour
la Cohsion Sociale et lEgalit des chances)
was in charge of giving annual public subsidies to local associations with the condition of
co-funding from municipal authorities. These
subsidies were dedicated to social issues such
as education, employment, culture, sports,
and arts. This approach was not coordinated
with the PNRU.
Though the PNRU and ACSE led to some
physical improvements in specific neighbor-
4 | The German Marshall Fund of the United States
hoods as a result of new public amenities

and the success of a few business relocation
initiatives, official sources show that both
programs have had a low impact on the main
economic indicators in the designated areas.5
In those areas, poverty actually increased by
1.3 percent between 2008 and 2013 and is still
much higher than in surrounding neighbor5 cf. Rapport annuel de lONZUS 2013 annual report of the
Observatory of Disadvantaged Neighborhoods (Zones Urbaines
Sensibles ZUS). Ten years after the ZUS creation, the report
shows that the gap between these neighborhoods and the rest of the
cities has increased during the past year.
neighborhoods where electoral turn out is

very low.
Figure 3
A public-driven program seeking a better inclusion of private actors and funders. PNRU Program
Funding Sources.
Source: ANRU Annual Report 2013
hoods (36.5 percent of poor households in

Zones Urbaines Sensibles ZUS versus 12.7
percent in the cities in general). Illiteracy rates
are 15 percent in ZUS versus an average of 7
percent for the whole country.
A Top-Down System with Unequal and

Often Poor Community Representation
The PNRU has been based on very strong
interaction between mayors and national
government representatives. In the PNRU
organizational framework, the mayor is the

point person at the local level, speaking for
all other partners in the dialogue with the
national government and its agencies. The
mayor is also in charge of the definition and
implementation of the master plan. Since the
first decentralization laws in the 1980s, the
mayor has been the most powerful leader on
urban matters. However, the mayors legitimacy may be questioned in the most deprived
During the different phases of the projects,

municipal authorities were encouraged to
engage local residents through a consultation
process. How local residents are involved
varies from one city to another, but has often
been limited to simple public meetings. In a
few cases, community-based groups developed actions in order to fight the municipalitys plans, and they sometimes succeeded in
having them redefined. These community
groups generally have not evolved to become
more enduring forms of representation. More
local resident involvement in the process
would have potentially had stronger effects on
the community: more of a focus on socioeconomic matters, a better use of local resources
and assets, an opportunity to increase civic
participation, and forms of empowerment that
can improve education and job opportunities.
The successive reports on the PNRU6 stressed
that more innovation was necessary in this
area, and suggested that agencies work in new
ways along with residents but also with the
mayors and local elected officials.
6 In February 2013, the government released a report marking its
ten-year anniversary (Rapport du Comit Interministriel des Villes du
19 fvrier 2013) identifying a major area where our program could
become more effective: by involving and empowering new actors to
participate in the planning process and even play leadership roles.
In 2014, a report issued after a broad-based consultation among
elected representatives, practitioners, and residents (Rapport de
synthse de la concertation nationale sur la rforme de la politique
de la ville) confirmed this orientation and demanded the creation of
the conditions for a proper participation of neighborhood inhabitants.
The government mandated an audit of all the associations involved
in these matters in the country (Rapport Bacqu-Mechmache cf 2).
Figure 4
Article in a major French daily newspaper

about how inspirational the U.S. tradition of
empowerment could be for French public
policies.
The low socioeconomic results illustrate

the programs inability to engage potential
employers or economic actors in general
(for example, real estate firms or new business owners). As a result, the increase in job
opportunities for the residents and increased
incomes through the arrival of newcomers has
been quite limited.
The low rate of private investment also reflects
the fact that investors have yet to be attracted
to these areas and their new developments.
The 42 billion in public works generated by
the PNRU from 2003 to 2013 was exclusively

public or quasi-public money, coming from
different bodies, including national and local
governments, public housing authorities,
and public banking institutions. This public
money rarely leveraged private funding. Aside
from the expected private investments that the
mayor was charged with raising no specific
public-private partnership (PPP) framework
had been implemented for the program.
While the official PNRU evaluation report7
calls for new funding schemes that would
better leverage private funding, the inclusion
of local private actors in the initial dynamics
and definition of the project can be considered a first step. Private actors should be
considered as potential cofounders but above
all as potential conveners between physical
transformation and economic impact.
Focusing on the United States:

Why and How?
Looking to the United States for new solutions
may seem paradoxical. The urban patterns in
France and the United States are frequently
described as opposite, and a U.S. city in itself
is not generally considered an obvious model
in France. In the United States, the public
policy context was actually influenced by a
major withdrawal of direct public funding for
development in the 1970s and 1980s. Public
7 Dix ans de PNRU: Bilan et Perspectives rapport de la mission
dvaluation confie au Conseil dOrientation de lONZUS under
the direction of Malgorn, to the Ministre Dlgu la Ville M. Lamy
March 4, 2013.
funding is still extremely important in France,

on the other hand, compared to many other
countries.
Nonetheless, many of the best examples of
urban regeneration projects that utilize a
more inclusive, community-driven planning
approach are in the United States,8 where
effective collaboration between the non-profit,
philanthropic, private, and public sectors has
been critical to successful revitalization strategies in many cities.
As the following section illustrates, even
a very brief bibliographical review shows
how common the French-U.S. urban policy
comparison has become.
Background: Documentary Review on

the France-U.S. Comparison
The interest in a French-U.S. comparison is

not new. In his 2003 book Faire socit, la
politique de la ville en France et aux EtatsUnis/Building a society, urban policies in
France and in the U.S., Jacques Donzelot9
compares the French and U.S. approaches
to urban policy and community representation. He points out that the U.S. meaning of
communities is barely translatable in French.
He shows that in U.S. cities, communities
are often identified by neighborhoods. Such
a designation is not commonly accepted in
France, especially when referencing ethnic
communities. But Donzelot demonstrates that
8 lEnpowerment, nouvel horizon de la politique de la ville/Empowerment, new perspective for neighborhoods transformation, Le
Monde, February 7, 2013
9 with Catherine Mvel and Anne Wyvekens
the notion of place-based communities in

the United States goes beyond ethnic-group
affiliations to designate groups that achieve a
genuine territorial representation.
The research work of Frdric Gilli in 2007,
La politique de la ville aux Etats-Unis, une
perspective franaise / Urban policies in
the U.S., a French perspective, describes the
evolution of the U.S. context. His conclusion
outlines the role of the federal government
in shaping the system. From an analysis of
successive and diverse U.S. programs, he
maintains that initiatives and projects on
the ground result more from co-production
between different levels of decision-making
than from any kind of strictly top-down or
bottom-up process.
Politique De La Ville: Lexprience Amricaine / Urban Policies: The American Experience written by Cyril Cosme, a former
French diplomat in Washington, describes the
different stages in U.S. urban policy over the
last 50 years and highlights a few successful
examples of the development of mixed-income neighborhoods. Its official release by
the Centre dAnalyse Stratgique (the prime
ministers think tank) during a symposium in
December 2012 could be considered an invitation for others to look to the United States for
inspiration.
The report Pour une rforme radicale de la
politique de la ville. Ca ne se fera pas sans
nous Citoyennet et pouvoir dagir dans les
quartiers / A radical reform of urban policies wont happen without us. Citizenship
and empowerment in the neighborhoods, by

Marie-Hlne Bacqu and Mohamed Mechmache was released in 2014 and was based
on consultation with inhabitants associations
all across France. Several of its recommendations remind me of U.S. practices. The report
calls for the empowerment of residents and
a better place for them in the democratic
process, which could lead to neighborhood
transformation. One of the tools would be
the development of philanthropic action.
Another is the role of banking institutions.
The authors underline that this call for new
actors to emerge is not a way to justify or
even to ask for a disengagement of the public
sector. They also stress the fact that the usual
mental framework to think of social relationships in France relies on domination rather
than collaboration, and that a cultural shift
would be needed in political, institutional, and
professional fields.
These conclusions have been debated in the
field of social sciences. In one recent article,10
Thomas Kirszbaum outlines that even if the
authors do not mention the United States
specifically in their urban policy proposals, it
nonetheless often remains a major influence.
Kirszbaum does not contest the interest of
this inspiration but is very pessimistic about
its possible transfer to a French context.
According to him, the mayors and national
government have too much to lose in terms
10 Vers un empowerment la franaise? A propos du rapport
Bacqu-Mechmache/Towards a French style of empowerment?
Concerning the Bacqu-Mechmache report, la Vie des Ides,
Thomas Kirszbaum, 11/12/2103
of power in a process that would potentially

redefine what the common good in these
neighborhoods might be.
My present research has no ambition to take
part into this scientific debate but will give a
better understanding of the concepts to local
practitioners in France through illustrations of
their implementation.
Precaution: An Impossible
France-U.S. Comparison?
Studies show how difficult it is to adapt U.S.

practice to a French context, so the comparison exercise requires extreme caution. The
following outlines a few key contextual differences.
The institutional framework is extremely
diverse from one state to another in the
United States, and even one city to another.
In terms of local institutions, the absence of
metropolitan authorities in the United States
(except for transportation) is a significant
difference with France.
The recent history of many U.S. cities has led
to a very specific urban pattern. Urban sprawl
was encouraged in the 1950s by different
federal policies such as the federal highway
program and the GI Bill and was further
accentuated by racial or social differences.
During this time most middle class households left inner-city neighborhoods. At the
same time, federal urban renewal programs
reshaped many inner neighborhoods with
new kind of housing (such as high-rises) and
infrastructure (highways). Another wave of

public reforms led the federal government to
withdraw money from many urban initiatives
in the 1980s. Unlike in France, U.S. cities also
cannot rely on larger scale financial redistribution or support for resources.
Figure 5
Communities or private investors can also

be difficult to compare with French counterparts. The interventions of private actors in
the public space are much more common and
shaped by a very different state of mind than
in France. Philanthropic philosophy is at heart
of many of their actions.
Despite these differences, interviews during
my research showed many shared concerns
between French and U.S. practitioners and
policymakers. A more sustainable city is
often a denser and more walkable city. More
inclusive policies and the search for mixedused and mixed-income neighborhoods
also seem to be a common concern from the
highest level11 to communities approach on
the ground.
The Choice of the Rust Belt:

Introduction to the Case Studies
St. Louis, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh are part

of the Rust Belt, a post-industrial region
straddling the northeastern and the east north
central states. This region has had to deal with
several transformative societal and economic
issues stemming from deindustrialization
11 Cf. the new federal approach encouraging collaboration between
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S.
Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection
Agency Partnership for sustainable communities.
Historical Population
Source: U.S. Decennial Census
including major job loss, social and racial

segregation, and neighborhood abandonment.
Legacy cities are very interesting examples for
a European comparison. They are among the
oldest cities in the United State and despite
their present situation, they retain a strong
urban fabric that is similar to European counterparts. The legacy cities could be compared
to the French Rust Belt (former mining
industry or manufacturing cities in northern
and eastern France) for the economic and
demographic context. They are also similar to

some Mediterranean cities in southern France
where urban sprawl and racial issues leave
the inner cities partly abandoned or with the
highest rates of poverty.
The history of these three U.S. cities is remarkably similar. They became some of the most
populated and wealthiest cities between the
mid-19th and the mid-20th centuries. Their
growth was led by the development of an
industrial economy that was based on mining,
transport, and manufacturing. After reaching

almost 1 million inhabitants at some point
before 1950, all three started losing population
due to a combination of deindustrialization
and urban sprawl. However, compared to
other cities, they can still rely on some urban
assets because of the way they were planned
and the way they have developed. These
assets include housing stock, urban design,
historic architecture, and institutions such as
museums and universities that were developed by philanthropic entrepreneurs.
As post-industrial cities, St. Louis, Cleveland,
and Pittsburgh must respond to difficult
challenges with arguably some of the most
interesting new initiatives. These cities have
become places of innovation. Alone, traditional actors such as municipal governments
are quite powerless to confront most of these
issues, so other actors have to take action as
well. It can start with artists, such as those I
met in St. Louis, finding great places to live
and exhibit or individuals eager to revitalize
a few blocks by acquiring buildings and
opening shops. These are individual initiatives
but many of them had the sense of helping a
neighborhood or community.
I selected neighborhood-level initiatives
because they are considered successful examples of revitalization processes, initiated or at
least co-constructed with diverse local actors.
These initiatives are designed to not only
enhance living conditions in a neighborhood
but also to bring in new residents and new

activities.12
Figure 6
The inner city neighborhoods I have chosen

to examine do not have any U.S. Housing
Authority properties. Their housing stock is
mainly private single-family owned buildings.
Nonetheless, their socioeconomic indicators bring them close to most of the PNRU
neighborhoods.13 The difference in the urban
landscape does not seem to be a methodological obstacle as it is not the cause of the
residents socioeconomic problems. But these
neighborhoods share the common problems
of poverty concentration, segregation, and
abandonment.14
It may be a paradox to study such a different
situation, where the problems remain huge
and the proposed solutions can seem far from
12 The benefits of such strategies are still fiercely discussed in
France, as mixed-income areas are not always considered a step
forward to more growth or well-being for the neighborhood and
its original residents. It was nevertheless one of the pillars of the
French public policy through the ANRU. If the debate also exists in
the United States, it is worth noticing that the vast majority of the
actors I encountered in the legacy cities consider this process an
efficient means to revitalize cities. Attracting wealthier inhabitants is
a challenge. It is seen as the only way to enhance present residents
living conditions. Investing in neighborhoods quality of life is considered a way of attracting richer residents and generate new economic
perspectives (residential, services etc...) The resulting gentrification
is a concern but has also been called a good problem to have in this
context.
13 It is worth noticing, though, that the PNRU also deals with some
inner-city neighborhoods in France, places that have high rates of
abandonment and poverty.
14 However, it might be worth noticing that some of the actors, like
public housing authorities (which predominant in France) will not be
represented in the case studies. Since it is a private market, actors
economic rationale will play a different role than it would in public
housing neighborhoods. This may account for more involvement of
private actors in general.
Basic Indicators for the Three Cities

Source: U.S. Census 2010. For each indicator, cities are
compared to the national average rate (basis 100).
the French system. Nonetheless, this research

attempts to learn from neighborhood revitalization initiatives in a context where Frances
main assets strong public investment and
top-down planning expertise do not exist.
Chapter 3 gives a comprehensive overview
of the U.S. model. My analysis is based on
interviews with local practitioners and decision-makers, allowing me to build three case
studies describing the process of multi-actor
project definition and implementation. The
objective is to make each process understandable for diverse audiences, to highlight
common trends, differences, and key success
factors before considering how some of them
could be transferred to the French context.
Three Neighborhood Revitalization Initiatives in the Rust Belt
his chapter presents the three case

studies. Each study first provides neighborhood background before focusing on
the different stakeholders, their organization,
and motivation for taking part in the revitalization process. Both the process strategies and
implementation are described. Each case is
illustrated with stakeholder interactions and an
activity.
Old North St. Louis:

A Strong Community Organization
Old North St. Louis is an example of a neighborhoods revitalization entirely initiated and
led by the residents. In particular, it shows
how a community is able to build and implement a strategy by itself, retaining inhabitants
first through housing improvements and then
by planning to redevelop several blocks with a
complex mixed-used project to bring in new
residents and visitors. It illustrates how to
combine individual dynamics with a collective agenda, and also shows the acute need to
find partners outside of the neighborhoods
boundaries.
Old North St. Louis:

An Enclave in Northern St. Louis
Old North St. Louis is a neighborhood located

north of downtown with about 2,000 inhabitants. It used to be a popular and industrious
neighborhood, inhabited by various ethnic
communities, especially workers from Eastern

Europe. In the 1950s, the construction of
the Mark Twain Highway physically divided
the community, separating residents from
nearby commercial areas. While Old North
has always managed to conserve its identity
based on a variety of people from different
backgrounds, it encountered a tremendous
loss of population and an alarming wave of
Figure 7
St. Louis
Located at the Missouri and Mississippi
confluence, played a crucial role in river
commerce.
Heavily touched by urban sprawl. Since
1950, the metropolitan area has gained
200,000 residents even as the city lost
500,000.
The city is increasingly segregated, with
the North Side concentrating the African-American population.1
For decades, red-lining from lending
institutions and racial issues prevented
new investment in large swaths of the
city. This under-investment has resulted
in alarming data, such as a 19 percent
vacancy rate and a 27 percent household poverty rate.
1 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/11/17/us/a-divided-st-louis.html. This article from The New York Times shows
interesting data to compare the North Side with the rest of the
city. It also focuses on the negative aspects of the neighborhoods reality without shedding light on collective initiatives
there.
St. Louis Basic Indicators

Source: U.S. census 2010 and HUD 2011
vacancy. However, the most recent census

data (2012) showed a demographic increase
for the first time in the neighborhood. This
has been linked to a long-term effort by the
local community to maintain and bring back
residents through a variety of interventions.
Figure 8
Old North St. Louis Restoration Group:

A Close-Knit and Active CommunityBased Organization
Old North St. Louis Restoration Group

(ONSL) was officially created in 1981, inspired
by similar groups activities elsewhere in the
city. As a community development corporation, the group is able to intervene on real
estate preservation and development, but it
has always been conscious of the simultaneous
need for community building and organization.
The neighborhoods revitalization was the
initial purpose for the groups creation. The
belief was and still is that there was a
priceless value in preserving both the neighborhoods buildings and the people who live
there. In a context of abandonment, these
buildings were assets for the future as they
could be magnets for newcomers. Motivations
within the group were diverse, ranging from
an appreciation for architecture, to families
who had been there for several generations,
to people who just wanted to rehab a property
that they could afford to buy, to a group from
a Presbyterian Church who had all moved
together in the late 1970s as urban pioneers.
Altogether, they succeeded in stopping a
St. Louis Neighborhoods.

Source: Dan Brassil
What is a Community Development Corporation (CDC)?

Created in the late 1960s, they are an attempt to provide an institutional response to a civil
society demand for better representation. This demand is a reaction to previous top-down
urban renewal policies, and it is also strongly connected with the civil right movement and an
attempt to respond to discontentment in deprived neighborhoods.
Non- profit organization incorporated to provide programs, offer services, and engage in activities that promote and support community development: economic development, education,
health, community organizing, and real estate development. Since the 1980s, CDCs have
increasingly specialized in affordable housing production, from land controlling to housing
building, repairing, and renting.
Usually serves a specific location and focuses on serving lower-income residents or struggling
neighborhoods.
Has a flexible framework with a board composed of local residents, associations, and sometimes businesses representatives. Many rely on either professional staff or volunteer work but
often a combination of both.
Various sources of funding: foundation grants and donations, federal subsidies, tax incentive
programs, and rental fees from housing programs. Funding is used for both executive budget
and activities and program implementation.
new highway project in the neighborhood in

the late 1970s. This gave the neighborhoods
households some cohesion and a strong
awareness of their collective power in decision-making.
During its first three decades, the group was
volunteer-based. An executive director was
first hired in 2001. The group today has three
permanent staff members, and this staff takes
orders from a 16-member elected board.
Though there is no formal requirement, every
board member is a resident of the neighborhood.
ONSL has to find its own financial resources,
though a consultative board including local
leaders is supposed to help with technical

support and fundraising.
Using Local History as a Strategic

Asset for the Future
The strategy for the neighborhood has been

entirely defined and implemented by ONSL
since its creation. The goal has been to
redensify the neighborhood by attracting the
residents necessary to make the area sustainable for a critical mass of local retail and
services. The value of the built environment
and the neighborhoods long-standing tradition of social diversity have been the strategys
pillars. Its physical (architectural legacy, urban
grid) and social (relatively mixed and active
What is Community Development Block

Grant (CDBG)?
Federal program enacted in 1974
through an annual budget allocatment
formula to states, counties, and cities
(above 50,000 inhabitants). Granted
with only general provisions as to the way
it is to be spent.
Supports local government to target
decent housing, living environment, and
economic opportunities. All projects are
required to meet at least one of three
national objectives: benefit low and
moderate income persons, prevent or
eliminate slums or blight, and address
urgent community development needs.
Grantees therefore have a high level
of discretion over activities, which can
include everything from infrastructure and housing repair to community
services, and municipalities have a
wide autonomy as far as their allocation
within the city. In St. Louis and Cleveland,
the same amount is given to each city
councilmember who is in charge of decision-making for each neighborhood.
CDBG is usually praised as a very
bottom up mechanism, as states and
localities are best able to decide what is
best for their communities.
The program represents approximately
$3 billion in the federal governments
2014 budget, but this amount has been
decreasing since its creation in the
1970s. Consequently, the program is
less and less able to meet needs.
tive narrative about the past. This narrative

created additional cohesion in the neighborhood, since every kind of resident could
relate to it whatever their race, social group, or
neighborhood status.
Figure 9
In terms of built environment, stabilization

meant immediate repairs on buildings to
prevent them from collapsing. Investors did
not want to see market value depreciate and
were therefore willing to take part in the
groups collective efforts through volunteer
work.
ONSL Executive Budget 2013: $190,000
community) qualities would allow Old North

to become a vibrant urban community again,
if they were maintained and reinforced.
Stabilizing the Community
One of the main goals at first was to stabilize the neighborhood and make sure that
the remaining residents would not leave. To
accomplish this, ONSL developed five fields
of community-building activities: community
organizing and leadership, home maintenance
and financial literacy, environmental health
and safety, neighborhood stabilization, and

historic preservation.
Because one of the primary objectives was
to avoid gentrification, helping the poorest
to cope with immediate financial difficulties
was a priority. Another aspect of stabilization
was working on a common local identity by
writing a meaningful local history, in which
every resident could take part. The designation as national historic district was an essential step. However, residents also worked with
students and professors of the University of
Missouri-St. Louis in order to create a collec-
Planning for the Future

The second step after stabilization was to focus
on enhancing the urban environment in order
to attract newcomers. Through the 1990s,
there was a growing sense that the community
was stable enough to think of the future, so
collective action should become more structured. Residents started acquiring some buildings from the citys landbank and began to
develop a planning process. The ONSL board
outlined the first planning actions in the
late 1990s; they were soon helped by a small
professional staff but lacked external support.
The groups three-year plan focused first on
the revitalization of one of the neighborhoods main streets, North Market Street. This
marked their transition from the stabilization
of individual buildings to the stabilization of
entire streets and neighborhoods. It meant
recreating an active streetscape, and for that,
attracting new partners to build new houses in
the area. These real estate activities led them
to really think of their group as a CDC.
Figure 10
Main landmarks in the revitalization process
of Old North St. Louis
1950s-1970s
Mark Twain Highway construction
Population loss, abandonment, and
crime increase
1970s
Neighborhood begins to organize
1981
Dreation of Old North St. Louis Revitalization Group
Designation as a national historic district
1990s
Work on the local history
First planning process
Adoption of CDC structure
2001
First hired staff
North Market Dtreet masterplan
Construction of first few houses in the
neighborhood
2008-10
Crown Square project
Reopening of main commercial street
Building Partnerships to Develop

and Promote the Neighborhood
On this first project, ONSL partnered with
RISE, a non-profit organization that is a developer of affordable and market-rate housing.
Its budget comes from a mix of support from
local banks, foundations, and local and federal
government agencies. In contrast to ONSL, it

has access to pre-development funds. Traditional developers were afraid to build in a
neighborhood that was still losing population,
but RISE accepted the challenge.
ONSL had a complex role: On one hand it
was still working with residents to develop a
plan, but on the other hand, it was adopting
the rationale of a developer when choices
were required. Moreover, for the first time,
the strategy had to be shared with or adapted
to an external partner. For example, RISE
insisted on revitalizing more buildings than
initially planned in order to get rid of a few
abandoned sites that tended to frighten potential investors.
The strategy then shifted from maintaining
housing stock to reopening retail stores. The
idea was to attract visitors as well as new
residents. A strategy formed to use Crown
Candy, an old-style restaurant had remained
a historic destination for the entire city, as a
magnet to encourage visitors to spend more
time in the neighborhood. To do so, ONSL
and RISE decided to reopen the Crown Square
project, a pedestrian mall that had been closed
for decades, and turn it back into a commercial district.
The partnership with RISE presented several
advantages. It led to connections with national
organizations having pre-development
financing, such as Enterprise Community Inc.
It also demonstrated that ONSL had partners
with capacity and resources for this kind of
project. This had indirect impacts on real

estate values in the neighborhood.
Crown Square: The Redevelopment of a

Long-Abandoned Pedestrian Mall
Formerly a vibrant neighborhood commercial

district, North Market Street was replaced
with a concrete pedestrian mall in the late
1970s. This failed to attract shoppers, so it
was closed a few years later, which created
barriers to neighborhood connectivity and
had a chilling effect on the local real estate
market.After the first new houses were built
on North Market Street, the community
wished to see this street reopened. Through a
community-based planning effort, the residents asked for a mixed-use development with
both residential and commercial spaces. The
goals were to attract more visitors through a
renewed retail area and make them change
their opinion about Old North (and maybe
North St. Louis), to enhance the walkability of the neighborhood, and to maintain
economic and social diversity in the community.
The program included:
a complete historic rehabilitation of 13
buildings on the two former pedestrian
mall blocks, coupled with the construction of 14 residential buildings adjacent to
the mall area. These included 80 greenbuilt mixed-income residential rental
units on and off the former pedestrian
mall (lofts, apartments, and live/work
spaces), and approximately 33,000 square

feet of commercial space.
the reopening of 14th Street to vehicular
traffic, reconnecting this local commercial
district with the surrounding neighborhood. The development included pedestrian lighting, public green spaces and
landscaping, and a small plaza.
ONSL had a double role in the process,
leading up a community-based planning effort
and acting as a co-developer of the project
through a partnership with RISE to purchase
properties on or near the former mall, which
soon became known as the Crown Square

development, and directing its redevelopment.
ONSLs reputation gave it good standing
for negotiating with landowners: its goal of
redevelopment with no displacement was
clear since the group was advocating for the
communitys interests of cohesion. Its limited
financial resources were also well known.
However, its legitimacy as well as its wise use
of the financial tools it did have allowed it to
be more successful than previous developers
in acquiring the buildings.
Figure 11
Thanks to its expertise, RISE was able to put

together different private funding including
a pre-development loan to begin a process of
assembling the ownership of all these properties. It was imperative for them to acquire
enough critical mass to ensure a major redevelopment impact, and to fully address the
What are Tax Incentive Mechanisms?
The federal government gives indirect
support to urban revitalization efforts
through tax credit mechanisms. Dedicated
to affordable housing creation or renovation (Low Income Housing Tax Credit) or
targeted at business or organizations located
in low-income communities for community
or economic development (New Market
Tax Credit), these mechanisms encourage
the participation of private investors in the
process. If tax credits are granted by the
federal government, each state is tasked with
choosing relevant projects to be funded. The
developers or groups with selected projects
benefit from a tax credit that they redistribute
to potential investors (mainly corporations).
Intermediary organizations, sometimes called
syndicators, connect investors with the projects and their initiators.
With regards to housing rehabilitation, both
federal and local governments are able to
give historical tax credits in eligible areas.
These different mechanisms can be complementary sources to CDBG and other funding
sources.
Crown Square Sources of Funding
For details on different tax incentive

programs see Annex 3.
redevelopment needs of the former pedestrian

mall and the streets flanking it. ONSL and
RISE became co-owners of the development.
The funding for the $36 million project was
incredibly complex. It utilized an array of
tax credit equity, tax-exempt bond financing,
conventional bank financing, and other incentives in a sophisticated financing structure.
Though the municipal government expressed

its support for the initiative, its role remained
confined to allocation of CDBG funding,
zoning adaptation, and funding of the public
spaces, which did not represent a strong
commitment and/or monitoring from public
institutions.
The project was completed in 2010 despite the
difficult context of the 2008 real estate and
financial crisis and is a beautiful complex of
Figure 12
rehabilitated and used buildings. Though most

of apartments are rented, some of the retail
stores are still vacant.
This 30-year long story is a very impressive
example of a groups empowerment and
action, and ability to solve issues no one
else was addressing. The group defined and
implemented their own solutions in a difficult context where there was no other broad
vision. The comprehensive initiative tackles
the built environment, economic development through retail, and above all community building. Recent population gains in the
neighborhood can be attributed to the ONSL
groups energy and strategic planning, and
its capacity to find a solid partner. This is a
compelling example of successful bottom-up
process.
Nonetheless, it is important to stress the limits
of this story. ONSL is leader of the process,
which gives it strength but also forces it to
constantly renegotiate financial, technical,
and political support from different public
and private funders. The process is long and
difficult because of scarce and uncertain
financial resources. It also suffers from isolation because it does not have strong municipal
guidance. The local initiative would likely
benefit from long-term municipal involvement, and a successful scaling up would have
obvious benefits for the city as a whole.
Tax Incentives in the Crown Square Redevelopment, in $

Source: Old North St. Louis Restoration Group
Figure 13
Cleveland
Experienced tremendous demographic
growth with the creation of the Erie Canal
between Ohio River and Great Lakes,
and soon became a major manufacturing
center.
From the 1880s to the 1930s, corporate
and civic leaders founded several major
public institutions (museums, schools,
health amenities) in a vast green area
that became University Circle.
From the 1960s onward, different factors
economic decline, suburbanization,
and racial riots led to racial segregation, abandonment, and impoverishment
in parts of the city, especially the eastern
neighborhoods.
The University Circle:

A Legacy from the Time of Millionaires
Roles of the Different Actors in the Crown Square Redevelopment Process
University Circle Cleveland:

A Strong Foundation, Some Committed
Partners
As active as a community group like ONSL
may be, it still needs partners to have a wider
influence, which is not always simple to
achieve. Other kinds of place-based partnerships exist that can have stronger and larger
impacts on neighborhoods. University Circle
in Cleveland is one such example. Here, a

group of long-rooted institutions put their
resources together and dedicated them to the
surrounding neighborhoods. In doing so, they
developed a new approach to the revitalization process. This required major organizational changes and a neutral convener able to
push and help implement this strategy. The
Cleveland Foundation was able to play this
innovative role.
In Cleveland, University Circle remains an

island of stable institutions surrounded by
some of the most distressed neighborhoods
in the city. Nearby neighborhoods such as
Fairfax, Glenville, and Hough suffer from high
unemployment, poverty, and vacancy levels,
and lack basic amenities.
Traditional Actors with New Purposes:

From Awareness to Strategy
Confronting this situation, some local actors

decided to develop a new strategy by themselves, a strategy inspired by the role traditional institutions had started to fill in other
post-industrial cities. The Cleveland Foundation had a decisive role to fill in Cleveland.
Figure 14
Figure 15
Cleveland Neighborhoods.
Source Livecleveland.com
University Circle Institutions

There are 19 institutions located in the
University Circle, among them Case Western
Reserve University (created in 1880), Cleveland Institute of Art (1890), Cleveland
Museum of Art (1916), the botanical gardens
(1920s), Cleveland Clinic (1921), and University Hospital and Severance Hall (1931).
Among the wealthiest institutions, Cleveland

Clinic has a $6 billion operating revenue15 and
Case Western Reserve University, a $1 billion
operating budget for 10,000 students.16 These
numbers should be compared with the $2
15 State of the Clinic 2012 total revenue increased by 7 percent to
$6.125 billion in 2012.
16 Budget Book 2015 CWRU (between 2010 and 2015, the annual
revenue has been constantly increasing from $900 million to $ 1
billion).
Basic Indicators for Cleveland

Source: U.S. Census 2010
million annual budget of the city of Cleveland.

Moreover, these institutions have a total of
60,000 employees, of which only 7.5 percent
(4,500) live in the adjacent neighborhoods.
Many of them attract students, employees, or
visitors from beyond the citys boundaries,
and even from overseas.
What are Anchor Institutions?
Non-profit institutions that, once established, tend not to relocate. This includes
universities, hospitals, and museums.
Surpassed traditional manufacturing
corporations to become their regions
leading employers in the wake of the
decline of manufacturing, rise of the
service sector and mounting government
fiscal crises.
Economic power of universities can
produce targeted community benefits.
Examples of anchor institutions strategies in different cities:
Catholic Healthcare West, a large
hospital in San Francisco, has provided
low interest rate loans to non-profit
organizations to make community
investments since 1992.
The University of Pennsylvania has
shifted over 10 percent of its annual
expenditures to local purchasing,
injecting an estimated $80 million into
the local economy in 2006-07 alone.
The Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit
provides incentives to managers to
hire locally and has a favorable policy
for local vendors.
For decades, these anchor institutions have

benefitted from a community service corporation called University Circle Incorporated
that is paid for through a shared membership. A mix of CDC, chamber of commerce,
and special improvement district, this organization provides services to the area that
the municipality cannot afford but that the
institutions expect (including landscaping and
security).
Nonetheless, these anchor institutions
have long been disconnected from their
surrounding neighborhoods, which themselves have unequal organizing capacity. Some
of them, like Fairfax, can count on a very
strong CDC committed in a long-term partnership with Cleveland Clinics. Others such as
Hough do not have a CDC at all. As poverty
and vacancy rates increased in the neighborhoods throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the
institutions started to be negatively affected
and they began to struggle more and more to
attract employees, visitors, and students. This
is how they realized that their national and
international development also depended on a
sustainable local environment. At some point,
driven not only by charity but also by necessity, the institutions began to act outside of
their boundaries. Their first attempts during
the 1990s largely failed because of a lack of
coordination and the difficult of actually
reaching local communities.
The Cleveland Foundation: An Occasion

to Go Beyond its Traditional Role
Established in 1914, the Cleveland Foundation
is the worlds oldest community foundation,
and has a rich tradition of investing in urban
matters and community improvement. In the
1930s, it helped lead the slum-clearing and
planning the nations first public housing. In
the 1960s, it launched an initiative to tackle
housing, employment, and educational disparities between black and white populations.
In the 1980s, it helped with the emergence of
community development corporations to
invigorate Clevelands neighborhoods. Since
the 1980s, it has engaged in the reinvestment
in Fairfax, Hough, Central, and other eastside neighborhoods near University Circle.
Its portfolio includes a focus on a wide range
of potential interventions to tackle community priority areas: economic transformation,
public improvement, development, neighborhood revitalization, and art advancement.
In 2010, the foundation had $1.8 billion in
its endowment, $85 million in grantmaking,
and more than $40 million in new gifts.
In an average year of $80 million in grantmaking, half of this amount is donor-oriented,
meaning that the foundation specifies what to
do with their money. The other $40 million
is more flexible; it used to be completely
community responsive, meaning that the
communities defined their own needs. But for
the past 10 years, half of it has been dedicated
to strategic initiatives decided at the discretion
of the foundation board. The foundation has
the motivation and the ability to work wherever it wants, with local partners and especially with local communities.
One of these efforts is the Greater University
Circle Initiative (GUCI). In 2005, the foundation realized that the institutions in the area
had planned new developments and funded
$3 billion of growth in the next few years,

which was an unprecedented opportunity
to make the University Circle attractive for
new residents, but only if this investment also
benefited the neighborhoods surrounding the
institutions.
What is a Foundation in the United States?

Four different types of philanthropic foundations in the United States:
independent foundations are generally established by individual donors or donor families
operating foundations primarily run their own programs but can also make grants
corporate foundations are established by businesses, from major corporations to family
businesses
community foundations raise funds from the public. They engage in grant-making primarily
in a defined geographic area. Community foundations in the Midwest account for a larger
share of grant-making than in other U.S. regions
In the Midwest, foundations mostly originate from a philanthropic tradition developed by the
wealthy entrepreneurs of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 2011, the United States had 81,777 foundations with a total of $622 billion in assets.
They distributed $49 billion, an amount estimated to have reached $50.9 billion in 2012, a
number that has been increasing since the early 2000s. The median grant amount in 2011
was $28,000.
Foundations have complete flexibility to determine the conditions the what, who, where,
and how of their grant-making activity.
This activity can take form of general support,
program support, capital support, research,
and so on. Health (28 percent of grant dollars)
and education (20 percent) are the top priorities of the countrys largest foundations. More
than one-third (35 percent) of all grant dollars
awarded by the nations largest foundations are
specifically intended to benefit the economically disadvantaged.
Source: The Foundation Center
The GUCI has been a way for the foundation to shift away from its traditional role of
acting in a responsive way at a small scale. The
initiative focus area is four square miles and
includes portions of the surrounding neighborhoods (including Fairfax, Glenville, and
Hough). It had the opportunity to intervene
in a whole swath of the city, overcoming each
actors typical geographical limits (University
Circle, other CDCs). In a context like Clevelands, the foundation was the only actor able
to develop a multi-neighborhood strategy
thanks to its legitimacy and its financial
capacity. As the below chart shows, the foundation has had a tremendous direct financial
impact on the strategy.
The Greater University Initiative: Turning

National Actors into Active Neighbors
The rationale of the Cleveland Foundations

strategy has been that the success of the
institutions could affect the area beyond the
limits of University Circle, and attract more
investment, residents, and visitors to revitalize
the economy of the entire city. As in St. Louis,
one goal of this initiative is to attract and
retain higher income visitors or residents to
the deprived neighborhoods; another goal is
to simultaneously stabilize the neighborhoods
and their present residents by offering them
better opportunities. In addition, the Greater
University Circle Initiative uses institutions
resources to reduce the gap between rich
and poor adjacent neighborhoods, trying to
ensure that the positive dynamics will benefit
to the whole area. The GUCI thus uses tradiEmpowering Neighborhood Revitalization | 21
tional physical redevelopment but also targets

economic change. The Cleveland Foundation initiated this strategy, but it has always
intended to develop it in a collaborative way
with the institutions themselves.
Empowering Actors and Convincing
them of their Collective Power
According to the Cleveland Foundation,
previous attempts had been made before
GUCI but they suffered from either a
top-down approach or an inability to build
collaborative partnership with the residents.
The foundation worked to encourage anchor
institutions and residents to participate in
neighborhood renewal.
Before launching the GUCI, the foundation
met with surrounding CDCs, community
groups, and elected officials to gauge the
work of these entities and determine how
their goals overlapped or could inform each
others goals.17 The discussion embraced both
physical development and initiatives as means
to rebuild the areas economy. The mapping
exercise to overlay the future development
plans of all CDCs and anchor institutions
on a single map was completely new, and it
turned out to be a decisive tool as it showed
the transformative potential of a collaborative
approach.
Even if some of the anchor institutions were
already convinced that they had to help
the surrounding neighborhoods, they still
17 Extract from Clevelands Greater University Circle Initiative,
Building a 21st Century City Through the Power of Anchor Institution
Collaboration, Cleveland Foundation 2013.
were not aware of their collective power as

neighbors. In order to turn multiple anchor
institutions initiatives into an anchor district
strategy and make it more efficient, institutions were encouraged to share a common
strategy. Since the collaboration has been
based on a flexible and voluntary partnership,
instead of a legal contract, it requires constant
attention to maintain cross-cutting interests.
For each of the projects, one institution is
designed as a champion leader for its implementation.
Designing Tailor-Made Governance
The GUCI strategy focused both on institutional partnership and community engagement. Consequently there was a need for a
complex framework and efficient stewardship.
The Cleveland Foundation was the right
partner to assume this role. First, it was able to
act as anhonest broker to represent all the
institutions. Second, the health of the neighborhoods fell into its core mission, and many
neighborhood representatives already knew
and supported the foundations role. Finally,
it could provide seed funding to leverage both
private and public money.
Using Area-Targeted Strategies, Both in
Housing and Employment, Strengthens
Local Neighborhoods
Different tools have been used to bring
together University Circle and the adjacent
neighborhoods, through physical redevelopment and economic inclusion. First, a physical
and functional pathway was developed to
connect neighborhoods with anchor institutions through new development on formerly

underutilized land on one of the edges of the
anchor institution district. This new neighborhood is known as Uptown. Initially planned as
an extension of CWRUs campus, it evolved to
become a major project with a wider impact
Figure 16
Main Landmarks in the Revitalization
Process
1960s
Creation of University Circle Inc
1990s
Anchor institutions make first attempts to
reach out to surrounding neighborhoods
2005
Greater University Circle Initiative
creation by the Cleveland Foundation
2007
Launch of GUCI housing and economic
initiatives
2010
Opening of the first Evergreen Cooperatives
Opening of the Newbridge Center
2012
Uptown mixed-used development phase I
is completed
Opening of the MOCA
2013
Uptown phase II is initiated
Ground-breaking for other projects
including transportation
for GUCIs goals. Its program includes new

housing (mainly rental apartments), new retail
options for the students and residents, and
investment in cultural institutions (such as the
Museum of Contemporary Art) that would
attract or retain new residents or visitors in
this part of the city. CWRUs role was critical
to bringing the project to fruition, as it had
been the initiator, the convener of the design
competition, and the assembler and initial
owner of the land. The Cleveland Foundation
played an important part by funding both
planning works and capital investment. The
coordination with Greater Cleveland Regional
Transit Authority also allowed the development to be combined with periodic enhancements in the public transportation system.
The developer MRN.ltd, who had already
been successful in a major street redevelopment downtown, took charge of the two
successive phases.
Second, the Cleveland Foundation helped
anchor institutions design common incentives to encourage people to live, buy, and hire
within the neighborhoods. Major employers
have been invited to tighten their links with
the local workforce through job and training
opportunities.
There is a strong interest in these complementary approaches. Physical redevelopment has
signaled a change for investors and visitors to
come to the area.18 The economic approach is
18 According to the Cleveland Foundation, it had to have sufficient
community appeal and clarity of purpose to attract outside funding;
be executable in a short period of time. Cleveland Foundation
more local, but it nonetheless requires deep

shifts in the priorities and internal operations
within the institutions.
Live, Buy, and Hire Local
This second aspect of the strategy, the most

innovative compared to French public policy,
is the focus on the economic impact local
actors can have in a neighborhoods revitalization.
Live Local: All major employers in the
area give employees financial incentives
to live near their work in order to help
build greater income diversity in the
surrounding neighborhoods. Even so,
in 2012, only 4,500 GUCI employees (5
percent) lived there. Incentives include
home loans, exterior improvement funds,
and rental assistance. The program
predated GUCI, but has now expanded to
allow for better inclusivity.
Buy Local: In 2012, the GUCI institutions
spent only 28 percent of their combined
$3 billion in purchasing in the county. The
major obstacle to local procurement was
the absence of local businesses, so GUCI
targets the creation of small enterprises in
the neighborhood. The objective has been
to capture some of the local buying power
to build local wealth in the surrounding
area. Two examples of these outcomes
include Evergreen Cooperative Laundry
and Evergreen Energy Solutions. Each
business serves specific needs of the
institutions. For example, the veterans
association hospital voiced a need for a

green, industrial-scale laundry service. An
initial client is critical for the first years
of operation, after which it is envisioned
that the businesses will eventually be able
to serve clients outside of the Greater
University Circle.
The cooperative model is supposed to be a
way to make sure that this wealth creation
benefits the local employees and remains
in the area. For instance, the Evergreen
Figure 17
Evergreen Laundry Cooperative Financing,

in $ Million
Source: Evergreencooperatives.com1
1 The Evergreen Cooperative Development Fund is the financial
tool for the program. It targets its investments at start-up Cleveland-based employee-owned companies, with a focus in underserved industries and neighborhoods. Its first geographic target
is the Greater University Circle Area. It has raised funds from the
Cleveland Foundation and different local institutions CWRU,
Cleveland Clinic, University Hospital. In addition to economic
returns, its declared aims are to create new, living wage jobs
and promote asset accumulation for neighborhood residents; to
anchor capital within the neighborhoods in order to jumpstart
more local economic activity; to build viable, locally owned
economic enterprises that can help stabilize the neighborhoods;
to ensure income diversity and permanent housing affordability
in the area.
Laundry employs nearly 30 persons living

in the Greater University Circle and
expects to support 50 when it is at full
capacity. The businesses pay a minimum
wage of $10.50 an hour, and also pay a
portion of profits in order to train new
community leaders. They will hire from
within this pool whenever possible.
Hire Local: The Cleveland Foundation created a new facility called the
Newbridge Cleveland Center for Arts to
provide workforce training services to

youth and adults. The institution offers
specialized training scholarships based on
the hiring needs of anchor institutions,
places trainees in jobs, and mixes young
people with adults to encourage the development of role models. The foundation
opened the center in 2010 and is one of
its main funders, along with other local
medical institutions, banks, and foundations.
What is the Community Reinvestment Act?

Federal law passed in 1977 to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income
neighborhoods. Known as redlining, these practices generally took place in predominately
black inner city neighborhoods and paralyzed the local housing market, lowered property
values, and encouraged abandonment.
Encourages commercial banks and savings associations to help meet the needs of borrowers,
especially for low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.
Federal regulators review banks performance and give them a rating. They lead an audit on
an assessment area, which depends on the banks branch locations. Regulators expect the
banks lending performance to mirror the demographics of the assessment area. Evaluation is
based on the percentage of loans in low- and middle-income areas and to low- and middle-income individuals. Market performance is also taken into consideration. Activity is tracked and
reported by census tract.
Large banks defined as total assets of at least $250 million or affiliates of holding companies with $1 billion or more are evaluated in three areas:
lending to small business, individuals, and for community development
investment, including community development investment, mainly through the tax credit
system (HTC, LIHTC, NMTC)
service or specific products dedicated to low and middle-income individuals or areas or
training or services offered to the community
Resulted in over $65 billion in community development loans in 2013 in the United States.1
1 source: Findings from analysis of Nationwide Summary Statistics for 2013 Community Reinvestment Act Data Fact Sheet, Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, August 2014
The premise of the Greater University Circle

Initiative is to turn a series of individual interests into a collective goal. This example shows
how to use local resources and turn them
into assets for residential development, social
inclusion, and economic growth in a larger
part of the city.
The Cleveland example shows that the process
also needs a convener that is able to shape
a process in which individual strategies will
merge into a broader purpose. In this case, the
Cleveland Foundation successfully fills this
role.
At the same time, this example raises the
questions of the legitimacy of a large-scale
strategy where the municipality is hardly part
of the definition or implementation process.
The different institutions, including the Cleveland Foundation, must take charge of some
areas and problems that the municipality
cannot confront because it does not have
enough resources.
The initiative already has measurable impacts
on some of the institutions. For instance,
the number of students applying to Case
Western has increased since Uptown has been
developed. Still, the impact on the adjacent
neighborhoods remains quite low in terms
of absolute numbers of employees in the
Evergreen Cooperatives and the number of
employees that have taken part in the living
locally program. However, GUCI is not
considered to have reached its full potential
yet. The GUCI strategy involves community
building activities that are still in progress,
Figure 18
Pittsburgh
One of the most economically vibrant
U.S. cities in the 19th century, largely
based on the steel industry.
Important magnet for immigrant workers
and home to famous entrepreneurs like
Carnegie, Frick, the Mellons, and Heinz
during the industrial era.
Philanthropists launched education, arts,
or health programs for their employees
and built amenities such as libraries,
museums, schools, and universities in
order to support them.
Local assets, particularly foundations,
became a significant resource for the city
as it attempted to overcome the collapse
of local industries in the 1980s.
Shelters a huge high tech cluster but has
also significantly enhanced quality of life
during these last few decades.
Roles of the Different Actors in the GUCI Process
and some of the neighborhoods do not yet

have a proper CDC to represent them at negotiations.
East Liberty Pittsburgh:

A Strong Broad-Based City Leadership
Philanthropy can play a major role in finding
and funding local actors to achieve local
transformation. A major actor makes these
initiatives more successful. Nevertheless, as
efficient as place-based initiatives can be, their
legitimacy and their impact remain limited
if they are not able to work toward a broader

vision. The East Liberty example shows how
coordination between three main actors has
been critical to ensure successful revitalization
at different scales. It illustrates the efficient
combination of a long-term strategy shared
by economic and academic leaders through
the Allegheny conference, a city government
determined to use its tools voluntarily, and the
specific capacities of a CDC (here the ELDI East Liberty Development, Inc.), all working
toward the same goal.
In Pittsburgh, city leaders, politicians, businesspeople, and academics have recognized

that the long-term economic health of their
region relies on a high-quality urban environment. The collaboration of these actors dates
back to the height of the citys prosperity. It
continued through the regions economic
crises in the 1980s, when it acted to jumpstart the local economy while supporting
the conditions for bottom-up initiatives that
would revitalize disadvantaged neighborhoods through a series of strategies and tools.
This top-down long-term strategy for the city
and even the region allowed for stronger
and more coherent community-based efforts.
Figure 19
Figure 20
Pittsburgh Neighborhoods
Source: pinsburgh.com
East Liberty Neighborhood
In the 1950s, the East Liberty neighborhood

was Pennsylvanias third-largest shopping
district, with more than 500 local businesses
and a population of 14,000 residents. In
the 1960s, the city decided to reshape the

area based on urban renewal schemes that
included high-rise housing and ring roads.
Similar to the experience in Old North St.
Louis with the pedestrian mall, this attempt
Basic Indicators for Pittsburgh

Source: U.S. census 2010 and post-gazette.com
to compete with suburbs was a failure and the

neighborhood lost commercial activity and
population, and crime increased.
During the 1990s, city leaders decided to
demolish the legacy of the 1960s and bring
businesses, including major national brands,
back. In the decades since, the city has
replaced 1,400 high-rise public housing units
with 450 new mixed-income units. New
design standards have restored the traditional urban street grid to attract shoppers
to national retailers, and a third office and
retail project, a converted Nabisco bakery, has
landed Google as an anchor tenant.
Strong Leadership at Different

City Levels
East Liberty Development Corporation is the

main actor in East Liberty, with an immediate
connection to neighborhood residents, but its
action is linked with other strategies coming
from various other local actors, especially the
Allegheny Conference and the city of Pittsburgh.
The Allegheny Conference
on Community Development
The Allegheny Conference on Community Development is a non-profit, private
sector leadership organization dedicated to
economic development and quality of life
issues for the ten-county region that includes
Pittsburgh. The organization grew from efforts
in the 1940s to coordinate improvements to
regional transportation and the local environment, playing a role in the implementation of
a comprehensive anti-pollution law in 1949

that was badly needed to improve air quality
in this industrial city. This action encouraged
other kinds of investments from the companies, not only industrial facilities but also
the construction of new headquarters. In the
1950s, when the citys transportation system
was endangered, the conference was instrumental in building public and private support
for its preservation. When the industrial and
economic crises hit the city a few years later,
this same strategy of stressing the quality of
life and the environment as decisive assets for
economic growth was once again pursued.
The Allegheny Conference gathers mainly
private employers or actors such as corporations, universities, hospitals, investors,
foundations, banks, and the chamber of
commerce. As a non-profit organization, the
conference is able to plan for the long term
and is not dependent exclusively on government support. Among its members are local
Pittsburgh foundations that are remarkably
numerous, wealthy, and active in local issues
such as community development. Through
the 1980s, these foundations helped build and
financially support a large system for community-initiated economic development. The
most recent example is the Strategic Investment Fund, established in 1996 to complement and support public sector investments in
economic development. Originally endowed
with $40 million, it received a second round of
capitalization of $30 million in 2002. The fund
provides gap-financing loans of from $500,000
to $4 million for three categories of development: regional core investments, industrial

site reuse, and technology development. The
fund illustrates how Pittsburghs philanthropic
community as a whole intends to share a
common strategy, even if each foundation
follows its own priorities. In 2012, the Pittsburgh philanthropic community launched
the Big Rethink Initiative to analyze the
community development system in the city. It
defines future challenges in order to recomFigure 21
Main landmarks in the revitalization process
1940s
Creation of the Allegheny Conference
and first success with lobbying for an
anti-pollution law
1985
Creation of Strategy 21 document
1980s-1990s
Public- private support for the emergence of a network of community-based
organizations
1993
New tax policy at a state level to
strengthen public amenities
Citys investment in brownfields
First collective planning process in East
Liberty
2012
Issue of Big Rethink: positionning
Pittsburgh for the next stage of urban
regeneration, focusing on improving the
citys community development approach
mend a new direction and processes for the

use of financial resources.
Finally, the impact of the citys universities cannot be overstated. Beginning in the
1960s, local universities, principally Carnegie Mellon, have strived to develop an
entrepreneurial culture. The high quality of
Carnegie Mellons research in robotics and
software engineering played a great role in
the citys economic revitalization. In particular, the university created a pool of highly
skilled students, and fostered an innovation
culture in the city. Moreover, the university
supported by philanthropic foundations
implemented a strategy to encourage former
students to develop start-ups locally. This
promoted the creation of a new economic
sector. The academic sector, helped by philanthropic support and public endorsement,
succeeded in fostering a strong group of new
technologies.
Strong and Committed Local Government
In contrast to St. Louis and Cleveland, the city
of Pittsburgh has been regularly mentioned
in research on urban revitalization. The role
the local government played in the citys first
renaissance in the 1960s through investments in downtown and the theater district
embodies its early involvement.
In 1985, the municipality supported by the
Allegheny Conference and Carnegie Mellon
University launched Strategy 21, a plan
to enable county public and private agencies
to speak with one voice when requesting state
funds. Not only did the public sector support

private initiatives and activities, it also used
its own tools and resources for the collective
goal of urban regeneration. It made unambiguous choices in terms of public investment.
During the 1990s, for example, the city made
a series of financial decisions to invest in what
were considered key assets for the citys future.
This included purchasing about 1,500 acres
of mainly abandoned land and steel mills to
encourage their renovation. These decisions
were difficult in a context of very scarce public
resources. In 1993, a specific state tax was
raised to maintain regional assets such as
schools and libraries. At the same time, local
public agencies have led action on brownfields
area reuse through strategies such as land
assembly and site preparation. New amenities
were even built, such as a new convention
center on the former industrial banks of the
Allegheny River.
a dedicated consulting team. It outlined the

communitys priorities for future revitalization. The plan was revised in 2010.
CDC East Liberty Development Inc (ELDI)

First created by the Chamber of Commerce
in the late 1970s in order to bring industrial
activity back to the area, East Liberty Development Inc. (ELDI) did not immediately turn
out to be an effective CDC. The process took
a long time; after being shut for a few years,
it only became really operative in the 1990s
when it succeeded in fully representing the
local community.
A Top-Down Strategy Supportive for

Bottom-Up Driven Initiatives
A decisive step was the definition of the first

community plan, A Vision for East Liberty,
in 1999. This community-based planning
process lasted one year and was supported by
The strategy ELDI embraced in the neighborhood follows the goals that the initial plan
expressed:
to offer mixed-income residential options
in order to have a wide range of housing
and welcome middle-income families;
to turn the neighborhood back into a
retail destination and a mixed-used area;
to function as a community diverse in
itself but also capable of serving residents
from Pittsburghs other neighborhoods.
It was an ambitious vision considering the
condition of East Liberty in the 1990s. Very
soon, ELDI realized that it would need a
strong cohort of partners to be successful in
implementing it.
Broad Picture: A Shared Public-Private

Strategic Vision, at a Regional Scale
In the immediate post-World War II period,
a partnership was established between public,
private, and institutional leaders in the Pittsburgh region. When the industrial crisis hit
Pittsburgh, this cross sector group combined
their efforts to achieve economic revitalization. The Allegheny Conferences structure
allowed private leaders to easily bring together
their own tools to discuss a common strategy
with the public sector. They reaffirmed their

common belief that investment in the citys
quality of life would be a catalyst for such a
transformation.
This strategy was expressed, on several
occasions, through plans supported by all
parties. For example, identified as an area of
excellence of the academic sector, innovative
technologies were targeted to revitalize Pittsburghs economy. Carnegie Mellon University
focused on retaining the best students and
helping them build their own start-ups. The
philanthropic sector financially supported the
university to do so. The need to attract and
retain competitive students, residents, and
business owners compelled the public sector
to invest in the citys urban environment and
in strategic infrastructure such as the airport.
The municipality and the public sector in
general made strategic investment choices
to take part in the process and achieve the
pre-defined collective goals. Public money was
raised and used to maintain a series of public
amenities created in the previous decades
and considered important assets for the citys
recovery.
The investment targeted not only physical
assets but also human capital. With the help of
the philanthropic sector, the city initiated and
developed a comprehensive system of support
for community-initiated planning and development through the 1980s. This support did
not dictate what should happen at a neighborhood level but enabled initiatives to emerge
through capacity building, a funding system,
and an institutional scheme. It was based on

three components: operating funds for the
emerging CDCs, financial assistance for real
estate and economic development ventures,
and technical assistance for non-profits.
The philanthropic sector helped with the new
community development corporations operative costs and also was a catalyst for community-based initiatives. Different foundations
joined an organization called the Pittsburgh
Partnership for Neighborhood Development
that could be described as an intermediary
non-profit organization. Along with CDBG
allocation, it gave funds to five selected CDCs
during the 1980s, among them East Liberty

Development Inc.
A Successful Strategy at
the Neighborhood Level
Between 1985 and 1995, the regional
economic agenda for the next twenty-five
years was set involving leaders in the
public and private sectors in much the
same way as in Renaissance I and II.
But something else was happening an
unprecedented bubbling up of quality of
life initiatives from individuals, volunteer
groups, and non-governmental organiza-
What are Intermediary Non-Profits?

One key determinant for successful community-based initiatives is the strength of local
Community Development Corporations, especially their local representation, leadership, and
capacity to raise financial and technical external resources.
A range of non-profit intermediaries can provide CDCs with technical assistance, advocacy and
financial support, or technical support to access funding.
The origin of these intermediaries is diverse. Created by the Ford Foundation, The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) is one of the most famous, and helped the CDC movement to
develop and take shape nationwide.
Depending on the context, there are one or several of them. In areas with a strong philanthropic sector, foundations have created their own structures such as Neighborhood Progress
in Cleveland or the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development.
Intermediaries also allow the foundations to have a comprehensive and strategic view of their
place-based investments. They often help funders to target their investment to the neighborhoods that have potential for residential and economic growth, and have the capacity to select
the initiatives or organizations with the most potential for impact.
Indirect private funding such as tax incentive mechanisms or CRA also generates some
support structures. Known as syndicators, they give the investors some guarantees on the
projects and their neighborhoods. They also give the community-based groups some technical
and financial advice.
tions, many of which were in turn funded

by the corporations and foundations.
There was receptivity to new things and
willingness to take risks. This bottom up
energy was especially exhibited by young
adults in their 20s and 30s who began
populating older neighborhoods, renovating houses, creating art, and starting
new businesses.19
The example of East Liberty is illustrative
of the strength of the mobilization of one
community and what it can achieve. Based
on locally defined strategy (regain diversity
in terms of residents and economic activity
through the development of new retail
options), the neighborhood has experienced a
significant renewal. Thanks to federal grants,
the towers and elevated road built in the
neighborhood during the 1960s were progressively demolished.
During the 1990s and 2000s, the ELDI
become increasingly professionalized, and
made strategic partnerships with private
developers. Thanks to philanthropic funding,
it invested in real estate programs to be sure
that potential benefits would return to the
community.
Once the retail district was reborn the
district now has national retail stores such as
Whole Foods and Trader Joes there was a
need to improve local housing stock. While
many residential buildings were abandoned,
there was a threat that local real estate would
19 SynergiCity: Re-Inventing the Post-Industrial City, Introduction:
Hope for the Future of the Post-Industrial City, Don Carter, 2011
be subject to speculation as the neighboring

retail district became more successful. The
ELDI launched a step-by-step strategy to
acquire vacant homes and work with residents
to eradicate crime. They turned vacant homes
into affordable housing through low-income
housing credits. Attracting Google to locate in
a former factory on the edge of the neighborhood is one of ELDIs achievements.
However, the strength of ELDIs leadership
and the efficiency of its operational team
can also be read as an indirect result of the
support given by foundations and the municipality through the 1980s and 1990s. ELDI
was one of the few organizations selected
to receive funding for human capital and
project implementation. The organizations
interventions to bring retailers back to the
neighborhood turned out to be more efficient and better accepted by the community
than the citys attempts to achieve the same
goal. The success relies on a combination
of a bottom-up strategy and a top-down
public-private partnership.
The Bakery Square Development:

A Successful Result of Multi Actors
Strategies
Located on the edge of the East Liberty neighborhood, the Bakery Square development has
become a flagship for the citys revitalization
since Google located a branch there. The
details of the redevelopment project show
the combined influences of different actors
previously mentioned: the universitys role in
attracting and developing high-tech companies, the citys efforts to support physical
reconversion through public agencies, and the
role of the local CDC in fostering a welcoming
environment for newcomers and developing
employment for local residents.
Program
The Bakery Square Development involved the
rehabilitation and redevelopment of an old
Nabisco factory on a 6.5 acre property. It also
included the development of 380,000 square
feet of retail and office space, a 110-room
hotel, and more than 1,000 parking places. It
also benefits from various public transit lines.
Process
The Regional Industrial Development Corporation (RIDC) bought the building in 1999
after Nabisco closed the 80-year-old plant.
It leased it to two successive corporations,
neither of whom managed to keep it in operation. In 2007, the RIDC received a $1 million
grant for environmental remediation from the
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection. Walnut Capital, a private developer, purchased the property from RIDC in
2007 for $5.4 million, added $1.3 million for
the cleanup, and led the redevelopment. Using
the tax credit system, the Urban Revitalization
Agency contributed to the refurbishment of
the building. Before leading the redevelopment, Walnut Capital contacted the community, specifically council members and ELDI.
Funding
Along with sustainable LEED-certified
design, public funds played a major role
in this redevelopment. The total cost for
the Bakery Square Development was $135
million, including a mix of public and private
funding. A $1 million grant from the Department of Environmental Protection was used
toward the cleanup and acted as a catalyst for
public-private financing. The development
received a historic tax credit and $10 million
in state tax increment financing, acquired
with help from the Urban Redevelopment
Authority of Pittsburgh. Renovation of nearby
infrastructure and roads was included in the
projects scope.
across the street. Bakery Square 2.0 is

expected to be a mixed-used development
with new office and residence space dedicated
to employees in the tech industry.
East Liberty is an example of the success
of multiple actors and the combination of
top-down leadership and bottom-up initiatives. This strategy comes from the collective
vision of public and private leaders, and is
built upon local capacities and assets. The
excellence of Carnegie Mellons new technolo-
gies branch encouraged city leaders to develop

a technology cluster. More importantly, public
and private sectors targeted the development
of quality urban environment as a priority for
economic revitalization. The different actors
at all levels have been empowered to take part
in this effort. Public and private leaders agreed
on what could and should be the role of local
communities. They gave funding and support
to some of the CDCs in terms of physical
development but also in staff training. They
Figure 22
Results
The Marriot Spring Suites Hotel was the first
tenant to open for business, in May 2010.
Soon after, Google moved in from Carnegie
Mellon Universitys Campus, and tripled its
occupancy to 115,000 square feet within one
year. The attraction of this big-name company
to a formerly disadvantaged neighborhood is
a combination of both a competitive university able to attract it to its campus first and
the success of the Bakery Square redevelopment. The role the ELID played cannot
be discounted. Since the 1980s, ELDI had
attracted approximately 200 new businesses
and over $80 million in investment. It is
expected that Bakery Square itself will create
1,600 jobs.
In 2013, after this site was opened, Walnut
Capital acquired the site of a former school
Roles of the Different Actors
did not assigned them to specific roles but

provided them with resources and funded
non-profit intermediaries to support them
independently.
Thanks to its strong and coordinated action
on housing stock, ELDI avoided potential
gentrification of the area. This is an important
aspect of this revitalization process, not only
for the neighborhood itself but also because
such strategies help the preservation of the
social diversity and balance between the
different neighborhoods in the city.
Key Factors of the Rust Belt Approach: What are the Lessons for France?
he following section summarizes the

most striking observations from the
three different neighborhoods studies.
The pattern shown by these three examples is
very different from our approach in France. In
all three cities, partnerships are much more
common, initiated on-the-ground, by either
community-based organizations or other placebased institutions. These partnerships are also
shaped by the strong role of the philanthropic
sector, which is able to act as a neutral actor
and an innovative funder.
This model is attractive, not only because it
can respond to a shortage of public funding
but because this kind of flexible alliance might
be a better way to identify and tackle local
problems, linking physical and social aspects.
The first three points of this section (strengthening community organization, developing
multi-actor place-based strategies, and
establishing philanthropic organizations) are
dedicated to factors considered crucial to the
success of these place-based initiatives. They
explore how these characteristics could inspire
a reform of the French system. It could be
helpful to use U.S. organizations (CDCs) as an
inspiration, using the examples of their mode
of collaboration (anchor districts) or the types
of actors that play a decisive role in the U.S.
process (philanthropy dedicated to community
development).
Even if there is a consensus about the need
for greater participation of local actors and
strengthening neighborhood representation,

opening the system to institutional or private
interests will raise some fears in France.
Such a system appears much more complex,
competitive, and diffuse than the French one.
There may be suspicion that private actors will
have their own motivations and will not defend
the general interest. There may also be a risk
of a fragmented city in which local actors do
not have the same level of commitment and
efficiency across the area. Is it possible to
maintain some of the most important principles of French urban policy, including community equity, while developing more diverse
partnerships and including new actors?
The cases studies themselves give some interesting answers to these concerns. The fourth
and fifth points of this section develop these
answers by describing how the U.S. system
itself includes some tools in order to channel
public and private investments to the right
needs and to help local actors identify opportunities. It also underlines the importance of an
excellent combination of place-based strategies on one hand and the large-scale visions
of public actors on the other. This last point
reminds us that the French system and professional culture contain some several strong
points that should not be abandoned.
Strengthening Community
Organization in France
In the United States, CDCs are organizations
that are dedicated to a neighborhoods interests for a wide range of topics. They conceive
of and deliver their own solutions, like any
other actors in the planning process. Nonetheless, they are based on the empowerment of
residents, and need to have an operational role
in a planning process to be effective actors.
Successive official reports in France have
asked for more citizen representation in the
revitalization process. How could the CDC
example inform the French system? Under
what conditions could the French top-down
political and institutional system empower
local communities?
The Successful Model of Community

Development Corporations
CDCs were created as a reaction against the

top-down planning of the urban renewal
period, to empower local communities.
Various actors can create a CDC, but they
should represent the communitys diversity
through their board and activities and always
strive to involve and represent local residents.
In St. Louis, the CDC worked to create a
historical narrative that neighborhood residents could identify with. In Pittsburghs East
Liberty neighborhood, the community planning process has been source of the CDCs
legitimacy during the years because the whole

community took part and the structure is now
accountable for it.
Further, their institutional status and financial
support allow CDCs not only to be decision-makers for projects but also operational
stakeholders. They are able to do micro-planning, to control land and real estate, and to
implement affordable housing or even more
complex projects. Their range of activities
is vast, and they can target both social and
physical change. Acting at a community level
can make this combination both easier and
more effective. CDCs are close to residents
needs but also able to identify local assets
or solutions due to their knowledge of local
dynamics. Perhaps most importantly, their

funding sources are diverse, which ensures
more independence and flexibility. Public
and private funding is directly targeted at this
level, with only a very light level of control.
Finally, the role of CDCs in any process is
quite flexible. They can be the initiators or
only partners, such as in the Greater University Circle case.
Nonetheless, CDCs come with their own set
of complexities. First, they can be only empty
shells without adequate funding for their
projects, which is difficult to find given the
complexity of funding process. Completing
effective projects also takes considerable
time and staff talent, which requires robust
Community Development Corporations

What a CDC Can Do
Remain in permanent contact with the local community, enabling the identification of precise
local needs and potential bottom-up solutions
Plan and intervene on a potential wide range of activities (housing, education, health) at the
neighborhood level
Execute land control and build and/or redevelop buildings
Design and execute comprehensive neighborhood plans
Attract and negotiate with private partners such as developers
Manage rental housing
Specific CDC Achievements
Identification of local needs and assets for development
Comprehensive vision for physical and social aspects of a project
Development of a project from planning to effective implementation and managing
Conditions and Limits
Actual efficiency relies on capacity to raise funds and form partnerships
Action is limited to their neighborhood; low impact on external decisions
support. The most successful CDCs tend

to overcome this obstacle by focusing first
on a few local assets and making the best of
them. This generally requires cohesion in the
community and strong leadership. However,
this degree of cohesion is partly due to local
circumstances; many communities do not
start with the same advantages.
The ability to find partners outside of the
community through non-profit intermediaries is a potential way to overcome this
kind of initial disparity. Therefore, often
CDCs have to form partnerships and comply
with funders views. In doing so, they can
lose some of their autonomy. For example,
the way public funding, such as the federal
governments Community Development Block
Program, has been designed causes many
CDCs to focus on housing production at the
cost of a wider range of potential actions in
fields such as health and education. There are
many other examples of requirements with
private money.
From community-based organizations to
service providers for a city, CDCs must
continually strive to balance a wide range
actions. Sometimes, the more active CDCs
get, the more they tend to turn into non-profit
real estate professionals, and these operational tasks can take them away from their
role of advocacy for residents. Some CDCs
tend to divide into different branches for
these reasons. For example, in Pittsburghs
Lawrenceville neighborhood, a new community-based organization has been created to
reflect the neighborhood CDCs dedication to

real estate.
The relationship between CDCs and
local political power can also be complex
depending on the local voting system and the
CDBG mode of attribution. Different CDC
leaders also mentioned the importance of
remaining independent from local politicians.
CDCs can empower local communities,
but they must find and preserve a balance
between representation, efficiency, and
autonomy. Nothing is granted from the beginning, and CDCs can be shut down if they no
longer prioritize the needs of local residents.
This is exactly what happened with the first
East Liberty organization in Pittsburgh. Their
subsequent success has stemmed from their
commitment to involve residents and give
them credit when there are results.
CDCs teach us a lot about how empowerment
is part of the general process of urban planning in the United States. Communities are
not given a specific status or role but they have
the ability to play a full part in the process in
all kinds of technical fields. Even if they are
not the only actors involved in neighborhood
development, they can combine social and
physical interventions at a grassroots level as
well initiate or take part in complex partnerships and projects.
CDCs have to manage a permanent balance
between representation and results to remain
relevant. While this balance in difficult, it is
necessary in order to empower local residents.
How the CDC Model Can Strengthen

Local Representation in France
The way to ensure local representation is

still not clear in France, where there is an
ever-present need for community building.
The notions of community and community-based interests as used in the United
States are not formulated this way. The term
community in itself as a designation for
people living in a same area has no proper
translation in French. There are many associations, including in disadvantaged neighborhoods, but they are usually based on ethnic
groups or cultural and leisure activities, and
can hardly pretend to represent a whole local
community. However, the U.S. examples show
that CDCs were born from these same kinds
of groups. Such groups have been able to
evolve into a long-term representative for a
neighborhood. Perhaps we should not wait for
groups to be perfect from the beginning, but
instead ensure that they are dedicated to the
widest possible representation.
The most recent French law on Urban Policies, established in February 2014, introduced a new concept of conseils citoyens
(citizens councils) to ensure the co-production of local revitalization projects with
the residents. Could CDCs inspire this new
French system? The law requires that conseils
citoyen convene local associations, along with
randomly chosen residents. It also states that
the composition and organization of these
associations would be defined at the city level.
These measures are a good start for a policy
that is adaptable to local contexts. There could

be some inspiration from the United States,
where the composition of a CDCs board is
flexible, and where it is accepted that these
organizations will differ from place to place.
The number of representatives and the links
they have with the neighborhood (such as
residency, land ownership, or local business
ownership) can be diverse. It is also recognized that it is a good thing to use, either
in the CDCs board or an affiliated advisors
group, people with influence such as former
residents, elected officials, or representatives
from the nearest employer to link with other
actors at another higher level. It should be
accepted that the local communities with
their own unique characteristics shape the
conseils citoyens. Also not all the territory will
be covered at once. Some neighborhoods will
quickly organize while others are still working
to find the right purpose, people, or framework to express their voice.
These groups should all be able to take an
active part in the process. In the French
model, it is assumed that conseils citoyens
would take part in the decisions regarding the
neighborhood at different key stages of the
decision process. The U.S. model goes further,
letting CDCs plan, design, and also implement their own projects in terms of real estate,
health, education, and other sectors. Without
this active part in the process, the notion of
empowerment is not achieved. This is a way
to turn participation into tangible results and,
in so doing, making residents participation
more popular and easy. The residents also

become accountable for what happens in their
neighborhood.
In a city like Cleveland, where the whole territory is covered with CDCs, it gives the impression of a last layer of decentralization. CDCs
can be a source of proposals for new planning
options or micro-planning, and the City
Commission gives advice before accepting (or
sometimes vetoing) the proposals.
Since France has achieved a tremendous
trend of decentralization since the 1980s,
would it be absurd to imagine implementing
a new layer? This role of a real stakeholder
would need to be acknowledged in official
policy. Until now, French law only mentions a
co-production role.
A few important conditions must be met
for local residents to take part in any coproduction process: financial capacity, training,
and technical support. These conditions are
necessary to turn resident groups into effective partners. Without them, the participation
process runs the risk of remaining a sham.
The capacity for action is obviously linked
with resources. National authorities should
consider a way to give the groups direct
funding both for their executive budget and
for projects in an area. The Ministre de la
Ville could fund conseils citoyens executive
budget on an annual basis and the ANRU
could fund specific pilot programs, including
one for a comprehensive plan with several
actors. In the U.S. system, funding for place-
based initiatives (especially tax incentives)

do not always go through municipal authorities approval. This provides the group real
autonomy from political considerations
and mayors influence on communities. To
some analysts, direct funding without any
control between its source and the organization is the critical condition that allows
the most developed stage of participation,
that is to say, a form of citizen control on
a planning process.20 Capacity for searching
for other sources of local, private, and
philanthropic funding is also essential. It
enhances autonomy from political power and
encourages involving local funders in the
communitys efforts. In Pittsburgh, the whole
system has been built on the thinking that the
community level was also the best on which to
develop public-private partnerships. Community representatives can build trust with local
investors better than a citys officials and
ensure that these private investments benefit
locals.
Nonetheless, financial capacity does not
always give an immediate ability to act.
Training and expertise support should also
be given to these groups. In the United States,
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development and several major foundations (through the Local Initiatives Support
Corporation LISC21 in particular) are
the primary funders of this capacity-building
process. In France, municipalities, along with

the national government, would have a role of
ensuring that the conditions are met for each
community to organize and act.
National institutions can help additional
groups form by targeting public funding and
bringing together assets such as national
expertise and training opportunities.22
This support could focus on what has been
mentioned as major advantages for community-building: strong local assets, strong
leadership, technical skills, and capacity to
build partnerships. National and municipal
institutions should keep in mind the risks
for such institutions: remaining empty shells
or sublimating their own purposes to those
of their funders. They should design a plan
to counterbalance those risks. Nonetheless,
national and local governments should not
define precisely what these organizations
should be. They will succeed only if they have
the opportunity to define this role themselves.
Public bodies should focus on modifying the
institutional environment to make room for
them and encourage their development.
20 Ladder of Citizen Participation, Sherry Arnstein, 1969
How could the Agence Nationale pour la

Rnovation Urbaine (ANRU) help these
trends to emerge? It could encourage experimentation. Traditionally, for each revitalization project the city proposes a comprehensive
plan to get some funding from the ANRU.
The plan has several components, each one
managed by a specific actor such as city
21 LISC: Local Initiatives Support Corporation. This organization was

created in 1970 by an executive from the Ford Foundation to support
non-profit community development organizations.
22 The question of the right persons or groups able to deliver this

training will be addressed in a following section.
Table 1
Comparison of CDCs and Conseils Citoyens
Composition
Activities
Sources of Funding
Half local association or part of neighborPublic, with possibility

actors, half individual
hood-planning commis- for private support
residents
sion; consulted on
Conseils citoyens
decisions regarding the
neighborhood; support
local initiatives
Depends on local
CDCs context. Board with
local residents
services, real estate developers, or public

housing authorities. Each plan could have
at least one pilot operation proposed and
managed by a group of citizens (represented
by the conseil citoyen) and co-funded, as
with the others, by the ANRU. The agency
is able to fund technical support for specific
operations, which in this case would be
crucial.
The creation of conseil citoyens should go
together with different types of support:
institutional status is critical, but above all,
financial and technical supports are required,
as well as an enabling environment that might
change the typical role of other actors. The
purpose should not be to give these groups
a designated role but to allow them to take
an equal part in dialogue with other stakeholders. This requires major changes in the
process and an effective redistribution of
powers to make them equal partners in terms
From community organizing to planning and

project building
Public and private
of status, funding, and technical and leadership capacity.
Developing Multi-Actor
Place-Based Strategies
From the beginning, CDCs were meant to
be part of wider partnerships and to engage
private actors. When he launched the
Economic Opportunity Act in 1964, Robert
Kennedy declared the need to combine the
best of community action with the best of the
private enterprise system. Neither by itself is
enough but in their combination lie our hopes
for the future. This expresses intent to use not
only residents energy but also the potential of
other local actors to achieve economic revival.
In struggling U.S. cities, traditional institutions such as hospitals and universities are
often the only large employers left. Their
participation in the planning process creates
new opportunities that no politician or public
agency could propose. But anchor institutions might not be able to play a similar
role in France. Many of them are funded by
the public sector and are currently facing
important budgets cuts. But even if resources
cannot be counted as key assets, the process
leading to the involvement of non-traditional actors should be studied carefully. How
could we raise institutional or private actors
awareness and involvement in the community
building process? Who would be the right
actor in the French context to take on this
task?
Anchor Districts: The Capacity of

Building Alliances to Play Local
First, an important difference between French

and U.S. cultures should be stressed. It is
common for individual residents or private
companies in the United States to invest in
the public realm or public amenities such as
parks. What is more unusual in the anchor
district examples, such as in Clevelands
University Circle, is that these private institutions also targeted nearby disadvantaged
neighborhoods. Given its large geographic
coverage and financial involvement, the
Greater University Circle Initiative is quite
exceptional, even in the United States.
In these cases, the collaborative pattern and
the strategy employed to convince different
types of local actors to take part in areas
revitalization is very interesting. This strategy
relies on local partners to collectively identify their own assets and resources and direct
them toward their surrounding neighborhoods in a shared-interest approach. This

grassroots strategy is the most effective option
to potentially tackle local problems.
The preliminary condition in order for this
strategy to be successful is increased awareness of the need for a community-targeted
strategy backed by a diverse group of local
actors. Convincing anchors that they have a
long-term interest in the surrounding neighborhoods renaissance, without using financial
incentives or regulatory requirements is the
most illustrative aspect of the Cleveland case.
Each institution and its staff had to work to
change their state of mind. Internal reorganizations may be necessary, as the strategy will
not be effective if it is only part of a communication tactic.
A few precautions have to be mentioned.
It is obvious that in any collective process
involving private actors, all stakeholders
will not be equal in terms of capabilities. No
specific actor should take on the leadership
role just because it has more money or power.
Is there a way to guarantee the collective
aspect of decision-making and implementation, and the community-targeted aspect of
the strategy?
In order to transform different anchor institutions into a complete anchor district, a neutral
actor is needed to remind all institutions
of these guiding principles. CDCs can play
this role, but depending on their structure,
they are not always able to do so. In the East
Liberty case, ELDI has defined the purposes
for the area through community-planning and

proposed different forms of partnerships that
are shaped in part by the interests of the local
community. In the Greater University case,
where the institutions are much stronger than
the existing CDCs, the leading actor has been
the Cleveland Foundation. These examples
show how flexible the collaborative pattern
can be as long as there is a firm reminder of
the initial strategic purpose of the partnership.
Another difficulty is to adapt any strategy to
the actual capacity of on-the-ground actors
in each context. The Greater University Circle
is an extreme example because of the wealth
of its anchor institutions. In the same city,
another group of institutions gathered in the
Campus District to develop a similar partnership. With much less money and thus less staff
and technical capacity, it was difficult for these
hospitals and universities to become active
stakeholders of economic and physical revitalization. Nonetheless, a shared strategy among
them allowed for greater impact of collective
spending.
How Should Local Multi-Actor Strategies

be Developed in France?
It might not be easy to reproduce examples

like the Greater University Circle in France.
Since these types of institutions are entirely
funded by the national government in France,
they are not as wealthy as they tend to be in
Cleveland or other legacy cities. And since
some of them struggle with funding shortages,
they sometimes distance themselves from
adjacent neighborhoods and their bad reputation.23 There is a need for innovative strategies to reconnect these institutions with local
interests.
Despite these obstacles, institutional anchors
have other resources to share (training,
culture). Tenuous as their finances may be,
they often remain important employers and
service consumers. Beyond institutions like
hospitals or universities, private companies
also should be targeted. Private companies in
France increasingly tend to locate new offices
in low-income neighborhoods because of
cheaper real estate or because of tax incentives
given by local authorities. They sometimes
consider such locations problematic and
develop security systems instead of involving
themselves in local communities.24 The organizational pattern used for anchor districts in
the United States could be used for any kind
of organizations, including private ones.
As with the Greater University Circle Initiative, the effectiveness of any collaborative
process will depend on the extent to which the
institutions voluntarily commit to participate
without any contract or legal requirement.
A climate could be created to encourage this
participation.
23 http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2014/03/25/a-toulouse-luniversitemirail-a-honte-quartier-250969
24 De sa forteresse, SFR regarde Saint-Denis (From its fortress,
SFR is looking at St Denis,) Le Monde http://banlieue.blog.lemonde.
fr/2014/01/18/1134/; http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/2014/05/02/
saint-denis-nouveau-quartier-daffaires-9-3-bunkerise-251904
(Saint-Denis, the new business district is turning into a bunker).
First, all of the shared interests between an

organization and the neighborhood nearby
should be clearly stated. A cost/benefit
approach could be used to put in perspective
both the costs of the present strategy (in terms
of costs such as fencing or video protection)
and the increasingly popular sustainable
development philosophy, which could help
convince different organizations that living,
buying, and hiring local is a more valuable
strategy.
In France, who would be the best actor to
use these arguments to convince private or
institutional partners? Who could give them
the sense of urgency and ensure that the institutions or private actors stick to a strategy?
The dialogue is usually between municipal
authorities (e.g. the mayor) and each private
or institutional counterpart. It should shift
progressively toward a pattern of partnership,
with the opportunity for residents and local
institutions to make proposals to a mayor
together.
As shown in the Pittsburgh case, grassroots
initiatives are more likely to be successful
if there is also a dialogue at a higher level
between the private and public sector. The
Cleveland example shows how a non-profit
actor such as the Cleveland Foundation can be
successful in convincing anchor institutions
to act. Private companies and foundations
share some cultural and historical similarities
(i.e. foundations were founded by philanthropists and have a private status). A foundation
also cannot be accused of following a certain
political agenda. In the case of Cleveland, the

Cleveland Foundation has been able to unite
different stakeholders and develop a common
strategy and an independent agenda.
How Could the ANRU Help an Independent
Actor to Emerge?
The PNRU relies on a specific relationship
between mayors and the national government.
These parties might not be the best to bring
non-public or non-traditional actors into the
process. Nevertheless, the proposal made in
the previous section for each neighborhood
to have an initiative led by a CDC could be
extended to any initiative led by a place-based
actor. One condition could be the partnership with a CDC or the presence of a neutral
convener to guarantee that the purpose is not
hijacked by any of these new actors.
The ANRU could also foster a better environment at a national level for such initiatives and
lead a dialogue with different organizations
representing the private sector. Additionally, it
could influence national ministries in charge
of potential institutional anchors (hospitals,
universities). These ministries could sponsor
pilot experiments in a few neighborhoods
concerned with the PNRU linked with a few
key anchor institutions (e.g. Hpital Nord
in Marseille and Universit du Mirail in
Toulouse).
Place-based initiatives attempt to blur physical and/or social barriers between highly
segregated areas and their adjacent neighbor-
hoods25 by adopting a shared-interest strategy.

In the French context of stigmatization of the
poorest neighborhoods and their residents, it
would be interesting to first target and change
the perspectives of those who know the area
because they work there. This takes more time
than fiscal incentives or mandatory requirements but it succeeds in creating the conditions for long-term community and economic
development potential.
Establishing Philanthropic
Organizations
The two previous examples show the interest
in widening the partnerships and involving
grassroots actors. In France, it is very difficult
for traditional actors to initiate new dynamics
or encourage other groups to enter the decision process. The following section considers
how French foundations could potentially
be involved. They are deeply rooted in U.S.
culture, but while weak, they are not totally
non-existent in France. How could their
development be encouraged to target disadvantaged neighborhoods?
A Traditional, Powerful and Autonomous

Actor in the United States
Generally, foundations enjoy great financial
capacity and operational autonomy in the
25 One could easily think of famous examples such as la Plaine

St Denis and the rest of the city, La Dfense and Nanterre highrise
project, but this kind of juxtaposition could be found in many
different ways and many different scales all over France.
Foundations
What a Foundation Can Do
Funds interventions of all kinds,
including urban/social development,
executive budgets, or project-based
investments
Target individual initiatives without any
rules for reproducibility or equity

Rapidly release important funding

Respond to ongoing strategies or initiate
their own
Intervene on different scales
Specific Foundation Achievements
Capacity of innovation due to a very flexible pattern of intervention
Potential financial subsidiarity to public
funders when there are common goals
Conditions and Limits
No compliance necessary with other
partners strategies
United States. Community foundations26 in

particular can play a decisive role in helping
to build alliances and partnerships, as they
are independent both from political power
and from private interests. They can use their
financial capacity differently than public
actors by funding innovative solutions,
providing support for a wide range of actors,
and covering all kinds of geographical perimeters. They are not accountable to anybody
except their own board and they do not
26 For the different types of foundations in the United States, see
table in Section 2.2.
necessarily have to seek immediate cost-effectiveness or reproducibility. They are key actors
for innovation.
Community development is a long-term
target for many foundations in the United
States. Their financial support is very helpful
for place-based initiatives to produce results.
Foundations often require fewer conditions
than public funding. The immediate results
they allow give credibility to communities
initiatives and thus strengthen both these
initiatives and the organizations that lead
them. They are also able to fund overhead
costs, executive budgets, and staff training.
The other side of this autonomy is that it is
very difficult to encourage or force foundations to be part of wider partnerships if they
make the decision not to be involved. They
are the only ones to evaluate the effect of their
interventions, and because of their financial
capacity, they are often in a position of power
compared to municipalities. In addition, the
number of foundations and the diversity
of their interventions can sometimes blur
strategies within the same neighborhood or
geographic area. For example, this has been
a growing problem in Pittsburgh, where
attempts at cooperation between foundations
have not been successful until very recently.
A Foundation for Disadvantaged

Neighborhoods in France:
The Missing Link?
In order to foster grassroots initiatives in

todays top-down system, there is a real need
for a new kind of actor in France. National

or regional foundations would be excellent
counterparts for public officials. This kind
of public-private partnership at a city or
national level could help propel the development of innovative on-the-ground solutions.
In France, a citys mayor is the unique and
powerful interlocutor for every question
raised by a resident, a business owner, or
a companys CEO about a neighborhoods
condition or future. As shown in the two
previous sections, this kind of unilateral
dialogue reaches its limits when local partnerships are required. Another type of actor
would be useful to play the neutral convener
in these processes.
In particular, an innovative funder would
be useful. The interest of one or more foundation(s) dedicated to neighborhoods and
communities has been recently highlighted in
a Bacqu-Mechmache report,27 which argues
that in the present French context, local
associations have to develop tight links with
municipal powers in order to sustain themselves. Even if their funding comes mainly
from the national level, co-funding by the
municipality is generally a condition. Generating philanthropic funding would allow the
organizations to gain autonomy. Moreover,
the funding capacity of a typical foundation
allows communities to turn their actions into
results very quickly, which gives commu27 Pour une rforme radicale de la politique de la ville. Ca ne se
fera pas sans nous Citoyennet et pouvoir dagir dans les quartiers
/ For a radical reform of urban policies: it wont be without us. Citizenship and empowerment in the neighborhoods 2014
nity-based organizations major credibility.

Community-building efforts launched at a
national level would benefit from a simultaneous effort to create or target philanthropic
action for disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Foundations could also help independent
capacity building, training, and expertise.
The creation and implementation process
for philanthropic action dedicated to local
communities remains a field to explore. Is
there a way to encourage philanthropic action
toward neighborhoods and community development?
Community foundations would be the
appropriate type of philanthropy to develop
in France in order to help disadvantaged
neighborhoods. Though France has very
few community foundations dedicated to
social purposes, several that do exist are
influential. The Fondation de France, for
example, was created in the 1960s by Andr
Malraux to support social science research;
the Fondation Abb Pierre was created after
the post-war housing crisis in the 1950s to
advocate for affordable housing. These foundations activities are not directly targeted to
neighborhood revitalization but some of their
interventions are related to it. A first effort
might be to pique their interest. They could
form a sort of umbrella organization, or help
another foundation develop.
To make this kind of philanthropic action/
community foundation sustainable, it is
necessary to raise money among citizens. This
requires a strong mainstream communication
effort to illustrate what has already been done

and also to identify interesting initiatives
that could be supported with philanthropic
funding. Some celebrities such as soccer
players and actors or entrepreneurs were
raised in disadvantaged neighborhoods and
maintain strong ties. They could be interested
in investing part of their income in this way
and then promoting this investment, which
would increase both funding and visibility.
How Could the ANRU Help an Independent
Actor Emerge?
The ANRU could play three different roles to
help community foundations develop. First,
it could lobby major existing foundations
and encourage them develop their activities
toward deprived neighborhoods. The ANRU
already has a specific relationship with one
of these foundations, FACE (Fondation Agir
Contre lExclusion Act against Social
Exclusion Foundation). A dedicated foundation should be created to focus on disadvantaged neighborhoods. In the United States, the
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plays a role in connecting cities
to foundations. Other existing networks, such
as the Funders Forum on Sustainable Cities,28
could also be consulted for international
support and additional expertise.
Second, to ensure that these new foundations have enough of an endowment to get
started, the ANRU should increase its effort
to draw media attention to interesting place28 http://www.efc.be/programmes_services/thematic-networks/
Sustainable%20cities/Pages/Home.aspx
based initiatives. This is already the case with

Les Trophes de la Russite, a grant that the
ANRU and FACE give together each year.
Through its strong connections with local
actors, the ANRU could help publicize success
stories.
Third, the ANRU should give foundations
a role in the PNRU process. One or several
foundations could become official partners
and co-funders of the program. Their strategy,
mainly responsive to bottom-up initiatives, would have an influence on the rather
top-down system of the PNRU. The pilot
community-based initiative mentioned in
section one could be systematically co-funded
by a philanthropic actor. The foundation
would be both a co-funder and also a technical advisor for the community. The condition would be that the initiative itself would
come from a community and that the philanthropic grant would be responsive only to it.
Public institutions in France should consider
the philanthropic sector an essential partner
to achieve reform of the present system.
The public sector is not able to encourage a
bottom-up dynamic alone.
Targeting (Channeling) Private Money

to Neighborhood Needs29
U.S. place-based initiatives are of major
interest for the French context as they have
29 Here, private money or private actors are defined as all sources of
funding not coming from public budgets and all stakeholders that are
not directly linked with national or local governments.
the potential to create tailor-made solutions

for neighborhoods in spite of two main drawbacks.
First, the strength and resources of placebased actors can be very unequal. If they
are unable to find external support, their
task is difficult.
Second, fundraising from private sources
is often a competitive process.
Including more actors in a planning process
means including many different strategies;
the results can appear less uniform than in a
process with fewer (and only public) actors. In
other words, opening up the process is risky.
The U.S. system contains tools and organizations able to help connect diverse funders and
actors with the needs of local communities.
These safeguards help neighborhoods and
communities ensure technical and financial
support, and they also help private funders
target the right goals and minimize their risks.
Some Important Safeguards in a Very

Complex System: The Professional
Sector and Legal Regulation
Place-based initiatives and a system with

diverse actors make the revitalization process
in the United States much more complex,
diverse, and competitive than it is in France.
Opening the process to private actors leads
to potential imbalances at the city level since
their strategy is led by their own cost/benefit
calculation. It can be difficult for placebased organizations to successfully attract
the multiple sources of funding required for

each project. For funders, it is likewise difficult to accurately measure their risk in the
process, especially when they are not local
but investing through a tax incentive mechanism.30 These actors tend to target their investment at the low-risk sectors or projects. This
is part of an overall economic strategy but is
also driven by a common idea that support
is required where it can leverage the most
impact. Nonetheless, it could be argued that in
U.S. cities such as Cleveland and Pittsburgh,
philanthropic actors have chosen to focus
on the most promising areas. While this has
produced results for these areas, it increases
the contrasts with the remaining neighborhoods.
There are also two major factors that balance
these trends and help potential investors find
and reach relevant targets. First, an independent professional sector has formed to support
community-based groups. Opening the
system to various funding sources has led to
a professionalization of non-profit organizations. This includes the CDCs themselves but
also other non-profit intermediaries that have
a critical role in the project. One key factor for
a successful bottom-up process is the ability
of CDCs to raise funds and access other levels
of funding or decision-making. If they do
not get financial support for a proper staff or
30 It is worth mentioning that in such mechanisms, private investor
participation does not necessarily mean that public money is not
important. Tax incentives imply critical amounts of public money. But
they allow private actors to choose how both their funding and this
public money will be spent. So the risks private investors decide to
take have an influence on public investment too.
build support for the implementation of their

projects, CDCs are useless.
A whole range of intermediary non-profits
has developed to facilitate fundraising. These
diverse forms (local, national, and others
that focus on specific type of projects such
as housing) are meant to help funders better
understand the problems and get to know
local actors. Neutral intermediaries can guarantee the sustainability of private investments
and the quality of the projects, and they can
help design efficient financing strategies to
target specific neighborhood challenges. On
the other hand, their role is to help empower
community-based organizations, giving them
access to the different sources of funding or
offering them technical training.
These intermediaries are supposed to be
independent from public or private interests,
so the only reason they target a particular
initiative should be the quality of the project.
In reality, they have often been created or
supported by private funders (foundations,
banks, etc.) to help them make better use of
their investment. In some cases, these organizations can develop a spatial strategy and
focus on a few selected neighborhoods.31
These different organizations form a professional sector, sharing a common culture and
common sources of funding. They often
play an advocacy role at the state or national
level for community-based organizations.
This tends to strengthen and unify the
31 For example, Neighborhood Allies in Pittsburgh or Neighborhood
Progress Inc. in Cleveland.
community-based sector and allows them to

have impacts beyond the local level. These
non-profit organizations consider themselves
a counterweight to politicians.
Second, legal tools exist to channel private
money to meet relevant targets and needs. For
instance, the 1977 Community Reinvestment
Act (CRA) forces banking institutions to
direct private money to some neighborhoods
with poor socioeconomic indicators that have
traditionally been locked out of financial
credit opportunities. The law requires private
investors to target specific neighborhoods in
an effort to balance the natural inclination
of private sector to invest in the most profitable areas, or at least their tendency not to
invest in the most deprived ones. The federal
government also regulates the nature of banks
contribution (percentage of loans, investment, and services). Within this framework,
banks are able to make their own choices in
order to comply with general requirements.
The process allows for the targeting of large
amounts of private money to low-income
neighborhoods. The CRA generated $65
billion of investment in 2013. It is difficult to
measure the effectiveness of this process, as
the argument could be made that banks would
have invested in the same neighborhoods
without any legal obligations. However, it is
obvious that the CRA guarantees that location
by itself will not negatively affect a projects
feasibility. It also makes banking institutions
more aware of what is happening in deprived
neighborhoods and encourages them to pay
more attention to the projects in a proactive

way because of the pressure they are under to
comply with legal requirements.
Can the French System be Safely

Opened to More Diverse Partners
and Funders?
In France, the initiators of revitalization

processes are limited and well-known: municipalities, national government, real estate
developers, and public housing authorities.
Previous attempts to initiate public-private
partnerships were made through tax incentives
in different fields of public policies. These partnerships were often unable to cope with major
difficulties and sometimes even had negative or
unintended consequences. This was related to a
lack of information for private investors.
If the system should evolve to include new
actors and forms of partnerships, a framework
should be developed in order to avoid such
dysfunctions. It could rely both on human
resources through the constitution or the
transformation of a professional sector and on
legal rules such as CRA.
On one hand, the French non-profit sector
should be strengthened and given more
autonomy. Its development could be encouraged by the national government, building
upon some existing networks. The network
of revitalization specialists the ANRU helped
create could be a pillar. However, this remains
exclusively funded by municipalities and
states, so it would benefit from new funding
sources. The strength of the sector in the
United States comes from the fact that it is

linked with community-based organizations.
The role of universities in this field is also an
interesting lead not yet explored in France.
Social economy specialists (conomie solidaire) and urban policies specialists (politique
de la ville) could benefit from developing
stronger connections with the non-profit
sector. This more diverse and autonomous
group of professionals could be the interface
between locally based actors and various
funders and local governments.
On the other hand, private money is still
insufficient for French revitalization projects.
Both private and public actors are responsible for these shortcomings. Until now,
private investors have not often sought to
invest in low-income areas as they consider
too risky. For private companies or anchors
situated in these or nearby neighborhoods,
awareness could rise through different
means (see previous section on this topic).
However, other processes including some
types of mandatory investment should
be explored. Public actors themselves are
not always encouraging. When it comes to
opening the system to private funding, these
actors usually raise a lot of questions about
convincing private funders to invest where the
needs are most acute, ensuring that they will
follow similar objectives as public actors, and
controlling the process.
First, a strengthened professional sector
could play an important role in assuaging
both parties. As mentioned previously,
some of the U.S. non-profits play the role of

tax incentive syndicators, where the public
sector labels certain actors to be in charge
of controlling or influencing the way private
investors use their tax deductions. This is an
interesting example where the public sector
remains involved in the process by choosing
to trust and delegate power to a number of
local bodies/organizations in order to safely
guide private investment. These syndicators
play the role of conveners between myriad
funders and myriad projects. When effective,
they encourage investors to learn more about
community engagement and consider it a
professional field.
Second, because it relies on legal obligation
and a solid spatial framework, the CRA is a
tool that could respond to the concerns of
public actors in France. The interesting aspect
of the CRA is that banks have obligations
to make loans to both individuals and to
groups or businesses. It forces banks to take
a professional interest in what is happening
in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and gives
them the potential to take on new roles, such
as being partners in revitalization plans.
However, banks would still have to invest in
projects with characteristics that are defined
by the public sector. This seems transferrable
to a French environment, as it gives certain
legal mandates to a private actor and relies on
a geographic zoning that is already used in
French urban policy.
How could the ANRU help encourage these
changes? As a national agency dependent
on the Ministre de la Ville,which also regulates the definition of disadvantaged areas in

France (gographie prioritaire), the ANRU
could lobby for targeting private investment
to those neighborhoods. It could explore the
possibilities of banking regulation as a new
way to fund local initiatives and advocate
for a law in this direction. Over the past ten
years, the ANRU has created a very strong
professional network (best-practice sharing,
professional training, etc.), which could
expand to the non-profit sector. In order to
avoid top-down training, the ANRU could
partner with other actors from different fields,
especially potential foundations or existing
networks of grassroots organizations.
Preserving City-Wide Strategies

Out of the three case studies, Pittsburgh
appears to have been the most successful
in connecting grassroots and citywide
approaches so that there is a greater agreement of priorities across different levels. This
citywide strategic vision allows grassroots
initiatives to develop successfully, following
different patterns and partnerships. A
common direction is shared by all, and the
whole system is much more powerful than
elsewhere. In particular, the top-down support
of public and private leaders to encourage
local empowerment appears essential.
It is striking that the French system already
has many assets to achieve this, in contrast to
the systems in most of the U.S. legacy cities.
The common use of strategic planning at
a metropolitan scale and the power of the

national government and municipal leadership can actually be considered great advantages to make bottom-up initiatives more
coherent and successful.
Overcoming Fragile Municipal Capacity
The impact of community-based initiatives

is dependent on the scale at which they can
work. This is especially true when the goals
are to attract visitors, residents, or businesses
from other areas; to change a neighborhoods reputation; or to better connect it with
surrounding or wealthier neighborhoods.
However, in these three case studies, even the
best examples of community-based strategies
are not connected to more comprehensive
visions for the city as a whole. This lack of
connection can often prevent these initiatives
from reaching their full impact.
While this is not the job of grassroots actors,
municipal authorities in legacy cities often
have very scarce resources, and there is much
less municipal planning and strategy than
there is in France. Cities can take a backseat to
other local entities (CDCs, anchor districts, or
foundations) for planning and even for service
delivery. This allows new actors to develop
and implement whole neighborhood strategies. However, these initiatives do not provide
or replace a comprehensive vision or a framework to define a common interest.
Because public money is very scarce and
private money is result-oriented, the system of
funding generally targets the most prepared
neighborhoods. This system tends to maintain or increase gaps with the most deprived
neighborhoods. For example, the way public
(CDBG) funding is distributed in Cleveland
or St. Louis is simple: each councilmember
receives the same amount of money regardless
of the neighborhood situation and chooses
how to use the grant. This creates a large role
for councilmembers and leaves no room for
equalization between neighborhoods.
The way the city of Pittsburgh managed to
define and implement a long-term vision
even with scarce resources proves that the
city can still play a decisive role in terms of
planning, initiating partnerships, targeting
investments, and supporting a comprehensive
community development framework. There is
also a greater awareness among philanthropic
actors that an overarching plan is necessary.
The philanthropic sector in Pittsburgh, for
instance, recently issued a report calling for
more cooperation between foundations and
a citywide approach to solving long-standing
policy issues.32
Is Bottom-Up Compatible
with French Cities?
Two things remain apparently irreconcilable

between the U.S. and French systems: if placebased initiatives seem so powerful in the
United States this is because local actors are
able to take initiatives and lead the implementation of projects. The U.S. system empowers
residents much more effectively, giving them
32 The Big Rethink: Positioning Pittsburgh for the Next Stage of
Urban Regeneration, June 2012
more than just a seat at someone elses decision-making process, but this process often
lacks coherence at the city level. The French
system, with strong leadership at the city level,
generally produces a robust vision and plans
for the whole city, but leaves little room for
other actors.
The successful development of bottom-up
initiatives in France requires some evolution in
the mayors role and power. The mayors exclusive dialogue with the national government as
well as the offices role in bilateral negotiations
with the different actors in the city would be
compromised by new partnerships and decision-making patterns. Such a change seems
difficult to reach, and it leads some researchers
to be pessimistic about its possible implementations.33 Nonetheless, the different case studies
show the tremendous benefit of preserving
citywide planning strategies and a comprehensive vision, and the importance of strong
leadership that makes decisions and strategic
investments at the city level.
In France, the law requires planning documents at a city or metropolitan scale for
land use, housing, transportation, economic
development, and neighborhood revitalization. This allows for the visibility of spatial
disparities and helps target public resources to
balance inequalities. These documents could
also serve as a basis for building wider and
more sustainable partnerships between public,
private, and institutional actors and making
33 Vers un empowerment la franaise ? A propos du rapport
Bacqu-Mechmache, la Vie des Ides. Thomas Kirszbaum
strategic links between different community-based initiatives. The Pittsburgh example

shows how strong collaboration between the
public and private sectors in the early stage
allows the different sectors to share the same
strategic goals for the region, and thereby, for
the neighborhoods. In Pittsburgh, place-based
public-private partnerships in East Liberty
leveraged broader agreements between the
two sectors made at a city scale years before.
The power of centralized municipal authorities in France should be used to help
strengthen community-based organizations.
Cities already help many local associations
through financial assistance. This support
could be enhanced to include technical
support or staff training for community
development. Nonetheless, it is important
that other actors and funders are allowed to
participate in the system to enable an effective bottom-up dynamic. There could be
more delegation in terms of activity from
municipal governments to community-based
organizations (micro-planning as in Cleveland, partnerships with developers as in
Pittsburgh, etc.), and municipal and national
decision-makers should allow more room
for private partners as well as local actors.
Governments should focus on the general
framework and rules required to make these
partnerships respond to the public interest.
Greater devolution should not be considered a
loss of power for municipal authorities. They
could become more effective by reinforcing
their strategic vision, ensuring that they can
bring all types of actors to the table, and also

by fostering a capacity-building environment
for community groups and local actors willing
to engage in urban and social revitalization.
Figure 23
How could the ANRU help these trends to

emerge? As a very powerful actor in the public
field, the ANRUs role today is to ensure that
every city echoes neighborhood initiatives at
a broader scale and that the plans made for
neighborhoods comply with citywide strategies. As such, the ANRU is the right actor to
call for innovation and propose some leads.
It has the legitimacy to guarantee that positive aspects of the French system (planning,
citywide leadership and investments) do not
disappear with the implementation of new
trends and initiatives.
Developing bottom-up initiatives and diverse
actors involvement should not be a way to
prepare for a disengagement of the public
sector. This research shows how strong
citywide public leadership makes the whole
system more effective. The French system
would gain by opening up to new actors. The
focus should be on the final purpose, especially strengthening the links between physical transformation and social and economic
improvement for the residents. Finally, the
predominance of public actors in the present
French system gives them a great position
to encourage other actors to commit to the
general goals and to ensure that no one actor
is trying to pervert the system.
Neighborhood Revitalization Process
Conclusion
he evolution of the French system

to adopt some of the U.S. practices
observed in the legacy neighborhoods
is not easy to imagine. The three examples
included in this research show that many
different factors are required to make empowerment effective. Institutional recognition
is essential. Direct and significant financial
capacity is another decisive factor to give
community groups an effective role in the
process. This role offers them more opportunities to propose solutions but also more responsibilities in implementing solutions.
Moreover, to make the community-based

initiatives effective in France, a comprehensive
overhaul of the system would be required.
This must allow for different kinds of actors
and approaches to emerge and strengthen. It
means that many different actors should be
able to speak the same language as the present
decision-makers in order to build trust and
ultimately share the same goals. Technical
support would also be necessary, and a whole
There needs to be a grownup in the room.
And most times that grownup ought to be
the public official, the mayor or somebody,
because the city controls the levers that will
make that happen or not happen through
zoning, through planning, through all the
process of public approvals.
Tom Murphy, former mayor of Pittsburgh.
framework of expertise should be developed

for this purpose.
To be truly relevant, community-based
groups should be independent from present
decision-makers, and the whole system of
technical support should reflect this change.
Does this independence mean a loss of power
for those already in charge? Not necessarily.
When leadership becomes stronger at all
levels, projects become more relevant and
appreciated by local communities. In addition,
all kinds of decision-makers, including the
present ones, would gain credibility from this
success.
haul of the French system, some of its current

characteristics should remain key parts of this
new vision.
A final concern is how to encourage this

independence without twisting the system to
becoming a competitive and unequal process.
First, encouraging philanthropic sector development would allow private funding to flow
into the system and to create a new institutional partner capable of having overarching
views of spatial and social problems. Second,
protecting and strengthening some of the key
aspects of the French system would actually
be a great support for multiple place-based
initiatives.
This one-year study taught me that the French
and U.S. systems are not strictly at odds.
Instead, both could gain by inspiring each
other. Though the recommendations within
this report would require an important over-
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Brett Theodos
Senior Research Associate
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Vice President and Director of National
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David Bowers
Local Office Director
Enterprise Community Partners
Sanda Kaufman
Director
Master of Arts in Environmental Studies
Program
Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban
Affairs
Kirby Date
Program Manager
The Community Planning Program
Affairs
Kathy Hexter
Director
Center for Community Planning and
Development
Affairs
Lara Kalafatis
Vice President
Development and University Relations
Case Western Reserve University
Chris Ronayne
President
University Circle Inc.
Mark Mac Dermott
Vice President and Ohio Market Leader
Enterprise Community Partners, Inc.
Bobbi Reichtell
Executive Director
Campus District
Anthony Coyne
Chairman
Cleveland Planning Commission
Lilian Kuri
Program Director for Architecture
Urban Design
and Sustainable Development
Cleveland Foundation
Evelyn Burnett
Vice President
Economic Opportunity
Neighborhood Progress, Inc.
Claudia Coulton
Lillian F. Harris Professor of Urban Social
Research
Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of
Applied Social Sciences
Steve Standley
Chief Administrative Officer
University Hospitals of Cleveland
Michael J. Schipper
Deputy General Manager
Engineering & Project Management
Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Agency
Tanisha Rush
President
Community Economic Development
Management Solutions
Denise Van Leer
Assistant Executive Director
Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation
Carrie Rosenfelt
Community Development Relationship
Manager
Huntington National Bank
Taryn Gress
Project Coordinator
National Initiative on Mixed-Income
Communities
Colleen Gilson
Vice President - CDC Service
Neighborhood Progress, Inc
Robert Brown
Director of City Planning
City of Cleveland
Jeff Ramsey
Executive Director
Detroit Shoreway Community Development
Organization
Jill Claybour
Director
Community Development Administration
City of St. Louis
Thomas Logan
Journalist
The Post Dispatch
Sandra Moore
President
Urban Strategies
Barbara Levin
Program Coordinator
Alliance for Building Capacities
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School of Social Work
Washington University
Stephen Acree
Executive Director
RISE St. Louis
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Pittsburgh
Sean Thomas
Executive Director
Old North St. Louis Restoration Group
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Director
Preservation Research Office
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Professor of Community Collaboration and
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University of Missouri
Don Roe
Director
Planning & Urban Design Agency
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Richard A. Stafford
Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy
H. John Heinz III College
School of Public Policy and Management
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Community Development Relationship
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Huntington National Bank
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Tax Incentive Mechanisms

LIHTC Low Income Housing Tax Credit
Created in 1986 to encourage the private
market to invest in affordable rental
housing. Provides financial incentives to
acquire and develop as well as rehabilitate
affordable housing.
The federal government issues tax credit
to the states and requires that the housing
built by the program remains affordable
for 30 years. The funding depends on the
population in each state.
States control the type of housing, its
location, and other characteristics to meet
residents needs. They write regulations
describing the selection criteria governing
the competition. They then review and
rate developer applications based on this
criteria and allocate the tax credits.
Companies called fund managers or
syndicators create funds to pool investor
capital. Investors that opt to invest in
tax credits get 10 years of tax credit and
receive a competitive return. They use
these funds to purchase tax credits from
the developers in exchange for an equity
stake in the housing development. With
the capital from the investors, the developers can limit the money borrowed
to fund the construction, reducing the
amount of debt and the rent level at the
same time. The amount of tax credit

depends on the projects characteristics.
or retail real estate projects (including

community facilities).
The properties can be rented only to

families whose income is at or less than 60
percent of the area median income. Their
rent payment is limited to 30 percent of
their income.
There is a considerable flexibility in the

types of projects they can undertake: real
estate or business purposes (commercial, industrial, retail, manufacturing, or
mixed-uses); for-sale housing units; or
community facilities (childcare, health
services, museums, or charter schools).
The mechanism is estimated to cost the

government an average of nearly $6
billion every year.
New Market Tax Credit (NMTC)

Created in 2000 to provide incentives
for private capital to flow to businesses
or organizations located in low-income
communities for community or economic
development.
Follows a similar process to LIHTC.
The intermediaries or syndicators are
called Community Development Entities
(CDE), and they have to be certified.
CDEs are competitively awarded an allocation of tax credits and have five years
to sell them to individuals or corporate
investors.
The cash received from the sales must
be used within the year to make loans or
investments in low-income communities
for development of commercial industrial
The amount allocated in 2013 was $3.5

billion (the amount was over $5 billion
per year between 2008 and 2010).
Historic Tax Credit

Federal tax credit created in 1978 to
encourage the preservation and reuse of
the nations built environment.
Owners of certified historic structures are
eligible for a credit equal to 10-20 percent
of the cost of rehabilitation.
The key project-related criteria are that
the property be income generating or
used in trade or business. Thus, the rehabilitation of owner-occupied residential
properties does not qualify for the tax
credit.
The amount of federal tax credit in 2013
was $6.7 billion.
As some other states do, Missouri

provides an additional investment tax
credit equal to 25 percent of approved
costs associated with the qualified rehabilitation of a certified historic structure.
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Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization

Lessons for France from Three U.S. Cities

Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization

Three Neighborhood Revitalization Initiatives in the Rust Belt

Tax Incentive Mechanisms

n early 2013, when I applied for GMFs

ways that community-based initiatives and

Since it was established in 2003, the PNRU

A Rising Interest for the U.S. Context

Bringing Lessons Back to France

The comparative approach to urban policy is

Largely because of an increasing shortage

As the program ended, a series of evaluations

As I became more interested in U.S. examples, I

I decided to focus my research on the tools for

What would French cities be like if different

ning process in a neighborhood, and where

about the transferability of their practice and

he selection of three legacy cities may

The PNRU: An Ambitious Public Policy

targeted tower in the park style projects built

There are hundreds of concerned neighborhoods all around France.

4 Popular especially from the 1950s to the 1970s, these are

While the PNRU has improved the living

Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization | 3

because other actors able to encourage such

Physical Interventions with Limited

In the PNRU, decision-making over which

Basic framework of the PNRU organization (2003-2013)

At the same time, another program run by

4 | The German Marshall Fund of the United States

hoods as a result of new public amenities

neighborhoods where electoral turn out is

hoods (36.5 percent of poor households in

A Top-Down System with Unequal and

organizational framework, the mayor is the

During the different phases of the projects,

Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization | 5

Article in a major French daily newspaper

The low socioeconomic results illustrate

the PNRU from 2003 to 2013 was exclusively

Focusing on the United States:

funding is still extremely important in France,

Background: Documentary Review on

The interest in a French-U.S. comparison is

the notion of place-based communities in

and empowerment in the neighborhoods, by

of power in a process that would potentially

Studies show how difficult it is to adapt U.S.

Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization | 7

infrastructure (highways). Another wave of

Communities or private investors can also

The Choice of the Rust Belt:

St. Louis, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh are part

8 | The German Marshall Fund of the United States

including major job loss, social and racial

demographic context. They are also similar to

transport, and manufacturing. After reaching

but also to bring in new residents and new

The inner city neighborhoods I have chosen

Basic Indicators for the Three Cities

Empowering Neighborhood Revitalization | 9

the French system. Nonetheless, this research