Community Renewal Through Municipal Investment ─ A Handbook for Citizens and Public Officials

Local officials are making investment decisions to enhance the quality of life in their communities and to improve economic development conditions. These new programs are not municipal give-aways, or, as some call them, corporate welfare programs, but efforts to invest wisely in downtown areas and neighborhoods with the goal of revitalizing them, with the hope that business and commerce will follow. This work presents case studies from Atlanta, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Berkeley, Boulder, Cambridge, Charleston, Chattanooga, Chesterfield County, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, DuPont, Grand Forks, Hampton, Hartford, Hayward, Houston, Kansas City, Lake Worth, Little Rock, Madison, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Bedford, Newark, Oakland, Orlando, Petuluma, Portland, Saint Paul, Santa Monica, Seattle, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. The case study topics include streetscapes, public plazas, museums, libraries, cultural parks, walkways and greenways, major infrastructure improvements, transit and transportation enhancements and other works.

As a chief executive officer of cities on both coasts of the United States for more than two decades, Dr. Roger L. Kemp lectures and writes from his accumulated experience in local government operations. He is also the author of Cities and Cars (2007), Homeland Security for the Private Sector (2007), Cities and Nature (2006), Homeland Security Handbook for Citizens and Public Officials (2006), and Cities and the Arts (2004), among many other titles from McFarland.