The upshot of Mr Mallach’s comments was that a small city like like Trenton, should have as its objective, to increase the numbers of higher income residents. Increasing downtown residency is an important part of this prescription.

It was refreshing to hear Mr. Mallach talk with a dispassionate view towards assessing the challenges and likely remedies in revitalization. In fact, he pointed out that the efforts of most traditional community activists weren’t really aligned with an ultimate goal of quickly increasing the city’s per capita income.

At a point in the conversation I realized what Alan sounded like. He talked as if he were a brand manager for Trenton.

A brand manager is the quarterback for a product.  She does the analysis to figure out what needs to be done and then calls the plays for manufacturing, distribution and sales. A good brand strategy segments the market in order to more exactly reach customers with targeted products.

Mallach pointed out that this is the opposite of what happens in a city like Trenton. Departments work in silos and therefore are unlikely that to work in some concerted strategy to achieve a marketing objective, like revitalizing a city.

When pressed, Mallach pointed to Baltimore as an example of a city that’s breaking this mould.

My take on this is that a useful reorganization for the city is to treat Trenton as a brand and its various neighborhoods, including downtown as sub-brands. A brand management team, and this should include formal civic associations, should be part of developing strategy for the brand and its sub-brands.

The big implication on our city government organization would be for the Economic Development team to be calling the shots at the behest of a revitalization oriented Mayor. Inspections, public works and even police should be aligning their operations to meet the priorities set by an Economic Development department tasked to build-up Trenton’s neighborhoods.

Good things will happen to Trenton if we can shape our neighborhoods to attract residents who have choices about where to live. This was another Mallach prediction.

However, it doesn’t do any good to crow about how wonderful we are unless we really are wonderful. But if we don’t have product to sell (available housing stock) all the marketing in the world won’t help.

There is much we can do to help ourselves create product that will appeal to the higher income resident

• One of Mallach’s suggestions is to forego inspections rigor (ala SOHO in the 60s) to enable speedy occupancy of commercial space
• Another (Dan) thought is to develop a program to match buyers with custom redevelopers able to convert abandoned properties into purchasable homes
• Yet another is to charge a fee or extra tax on the owners of vacant properties (to encourage turnover)
• Finally, we can provide tax incentives to investors that convert multi-unit houses back to single-family

The Mallach discussion gave me hope that the world of urban economic development could generate people with the right mindset to manage the revitalization process on the basis of rational economic analysis.