Aired May 29, 2007

Youngstown's urban redevelopment plan is attracting a lot of attention, particularly among other cities with lagging post industrial economies. Tuesday morning, we'll speak with some of the civic leaders who, rather than fighting a future as a small city, are embracing it. It's a vision where a neighborhood with a 60% vacancy rate isn't a problem - it's an asset. Join us at nine for the Incredible Shrinking City on The Sound of Ideas.

A tire decorates the top of a downtown Youngstown building, homage to the city's industrial past. After the steel mills left, so did the people. Youngstown has lost 60% of its population since 1950. The building is now a parking garage.	Rusting metal hooks once held signs to stores along this commercial strip connecting downtown Youngstown to its eastern neighborhoods. Over the next 4 years, the city hopes to bulldoze the worst of these empty stores, schools and other buildings as well as about 1,000 abandoned homes.
A forgotten city street on Youngstown's east side. City crews no longer maintain it. Under the plan, streets like this could be torn up and allowed to return to nature.	This summer, Youngstown's neighbors will start community meetings with city leaders to decide what to do with hundreds of abandoned homes like this one.
Youngstown City Planner Anthony Kobak stands at a forgotten intersection on the city's east side. There are no buildings near this intersection and the roads are pockmarked and falling apart.	Decades-old fire hydrants line an east side street waiting for residential development that never came.
Fellows Riverside Garden brings inspiration to one westside Youngstown neighborhood. Planners are hoping to market this cluster of homes along Lake Glacier as the Garden District in their quest to bring people back to a smaller, greener city.