The resurrection of an American city

The Resurrection of an American City is a case history of a local Model Cities plan that worked. In the 1970's it has become fashionable to denigrate the Model Cities program, which promised massive federal funding for the renovation of urban neighborhoods and was once regraded as a powerful weapon in the War on Proverty. The Program was born in an atmosphere of unrealistic expectations and the criticism which has greeted its shortcomings has been intensed, so intense that its success has been largely unnoticed. This book is a study of one of those successes in Cohoes, New York, were anaroused citizenry put the the program to excactly the kind of imagination and effective use that its creators intended. Paul Van Buskirk was a principal participant in the citizens' movement that took over citry hall in 1964 and began the resurrection of Cohoes. This book opens with a fast moving account of that movement and of the surveys and planning sessions that resulted in the Cohoes Model Cities Program.