How to Bring Back Struggling Cities

In 2014, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to build a $15 million film studio near upstate Syracuse, promising 350 high tech jobs. It was one of his many plans to revive the economies of upstate communities with state tax dollars. The facility, in an implausible location for filmmaking, was a flop that attracted little activity, and it was handed off to local government last year for the sum of $1.

This is emblematic of attempts to help America’s struggling post-industrial cities, now back on the national agenda in the wake of the 2016 election, in which Donald Trump won in key Rust Belt states on a promise to bring back jobs. But after 40 years of futile efforts to revive them, the question of how to help these cities continues to bedevil us.