Evaluating the success of urban success stories: Is reputation a guide to best practice?

Abstract

Do the reputations of central cities that have reportedly revitalized match reality? Can reputation alone be used to select best practices in urban public policy? In replicating research conducted a decade ago, we asked a panel of urban and economic development experts to identify, out of the universe of large, distressed central cities in 1990, those that had successfully revitalized between 1990 and 2000. We compared the performance of these successful cities with the performance of cities not perceived to be successful on a composite index of the change in the economic well‐being of residents from 1990 to 2000, as well as on a weighted index of economic, social, fiscal, and demographic change between 1990 and 2000.

Regardless of which index was used, there was a low correlation between reputation and reality. We draw lessons from this experiment on relying on best practice reputations in formulating and propagating public policies.