Beyond the Comeback City
Why Post-Industrial Cities Do Not Fail for Lack of Vision, but for Lack of Systems
Walk through Scranton today and you will see signs of progress. New businesses downtown. Restored facades. Events, murals, and renewed interest from outsiders who once wrote the city off.
These changes matter. They should not be dismissed.
But they also raise a deeper question: why do so many residents still experience instability, housing insecurity, and limited opportunity even as the city is described as “coming back”?
The answer is not a lack of effort or imagination. It is that revival has been treated as a story, rather than a system.
POST-INDUSTRIAL CITIES DO NOT NEED REINVENTION THEY NEED REPAIR
For decades, cities like Scranton have been described through narratives of decline and renewal. First we are told we are shrinking. Then we are told we are resurging. Each phase comes with its own slogans, plans, and promises.
What these narratives share is a focus on visibility rather than functionality.
Revival is often measured by what can be seen: new construction, downtown activity, branding campaigns, or isolated success stories. Recovery, by contrast, is quieter. It shows up in stable housing, maintained infrastructure, functioning code enforcement, and institutions with the capacity to follow through year after year.
Post-industrial cities rarely fail because they lack vision. They struggle because the systems that support everyday life have been stretched thin by decades of disinvestment, population loss, and policy choices that prioritized short-term wins over long-term care.
WHEN REVIVAL BECOMES OPTICS
The appeal of the “comeback city” narrative is understandable. It offers hope. It attracts capital. It reassures residents that decline is not destiny.
But when revival is framed primarily as a sequence of projects rather than a process of repair, it creates blind spots.
New development can move forward while existing housing continues to deteriorate. Job announcements can be celebrated while workers struggle to find housing they can afford or neighborhoods that feel stable. Downtown activity can grow while commercial corridors just a few blocks away remain vacant and underserved.
In these moments, revival becomes disconnected from lived experience.
The city appears to be improving, but many residents do not feel it. Not because they are resistant to change, but because the systems that shape daily life have not been repaired.
SYSTEMS FAIL QUIETLY, UNTIL THEY DON’T
Housing loss in Scranton does not always look like mass displacement. It often looks like deferred maintenance, rising utility costs, code enforcement without reinvestment pathways, and gradual attrition of the existing housing stock.
Talent drain does not always look like people fleeing. It looks like young adults staying longer than planned, then leaving once instability outweighs attachment.
Vacant commercial corridors do not always reflect lack of demand. They often reflect zoning codes, financing structures, and ownership patterns that make incremental reuse difficult in weak markets.
These are not separate problems. They are interconnected system failures that revival narratives rarely address.
SCRANTON IS NOT A FAILURE, IT IS A CASE STUDY
Scranton is not a city that has done nothing right. On the contrary, it has preserved far more of its physical fabric than many peer cities. It retains strong neighborhoods, cultural memory, and a scale that should support walkability and community life.
What it lacks is not potential, but capacity.
Local governments in post-industrial cities are often asked to manage aging infrastructure, complex housing challenges, and layered social needs with fewer staff, less revenue, and limited institutional redundancy. Plans are written, grants are pursued, and pilot programs are launched, but sustained implementation remains elusive.
This is not a moral failure. It is a structural one.
WHY SYSTEMS MATTER MORE THAN SLOGANS
Cities do not recover because they are rebranded. They recover because housing is stabilized, buildings are maintained, land is reused, and governance systems are aligned with reality.
Preservation matters because replacement is expensive and disruptive. Zoning matters because it determines whether small-scale investment is possible; overly restrictive rules can shut small investors out entirely, effectively killing incremental development. Code enforcement matters because safety without reinvestment leads to displacement. Infrastructure matters because neglect compounds inequality over time.
These are not glamorous interventions. They do not lend themselves easily to headlines. But they shape outcomes far more reliably than any single catalytic project.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF HOPE
The most hopeful vision for post-industrial cities is not transformation, but care: care for buildings before they fail, care for neighborhoods before vacancy spreads, care for systems before crisis becomes the only catalyst for action. This is not nostalgia, it is pragmatism. Cities like Scranton do not need to become something else to succeed; they need to function better for the people who already live there.
REVIVAL IS A POLICY CHOICE, SO IS NEGLECT
The condition of a city reflects accumulated decisions. If revival prioritizes optics over systems, inequality persists beneath the surface. If recovery prioritizes maintenance, preservation, and institutional capacity, opportunity becomes more evenly distributed.
Post-industrial cities are not waiting to be saved. They are waiting to be repaired. The question is not whether Scranton can come back. The question is whether we are willing to do the slower, quieter work that real recovery requires.