This Monthly Review story tells about the post-industrial devastation in Braddock, PA, and describes the efforts of its unconventional mayor at revitalization. Mayor John Fetterman is a Harvard Graduate who looks like a professional wrestler. He’s taken up the task of trying to revitalize this  city of 3,000 outside Pittsburgh, which has lost 90 percent of its population since it was imagined as a neighborhood for employees of  Edgar Thompson Steel Works in the late 1800s. Mayor Fetterman is working to establish artists’ spaces and urban gardens.

http://monthlyreview.org/081222straub.php

(Full disclosure: I’m friends with the author.)