Like many cities, Cleveland has gone through periods of decline and renewal, yet the process there has followed a process where these periods were not always obvious and often failed because of a lack of cohesiveness among civic leaders, both public and private. In his new book
Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in 'The Best Location in the Nation' (Temple University Press, 2017),
J. Mark Souther, a professor of history at Cleveland State University, reviews the city's attempts to revitalize from post-World War II into the 1970s. He shows that many of the plans developed had issues that almost doomed them to failure before they were even completed. Mark's book is a great study of a Rust Belt city and its attempts to believe in itself.