Rolf Goetze died last year

 I can't get it together well enough to do an annual recap of obituaries of people important to urban revitalization, the way I did a few years ago.

In writing an upcoming piece, I learned that Rolf Goetze died last year.  He was for a time the director of research for the Boston Redevelopment Agency.  While there and after he wrote three important books:

• Building Neighborhood Confidence: A humanistic strategy for urban housing
• Understanding neighborhood change: The role of expectations in urban revitalization
• Rescuing the American Dream: Public Policy and the Crisis in Housing

Building Neighborhood Confidence is especially interesting because it makes the point that many people do throughout the field, invest in people already helping themselves.  His point is that the point of government investment in revitalization isn't to breed dependence, but to improve neighborhood and/or commercial district conditions to the point where investors, property owners, residents, and business owners continue to investment in improvements without government support.

It's important to recognize that there is plenty to mine in "old literature."

I've read and own the first two books (alas they are in Washington), not the third.  Fortunately, when I got interested, university libraries were deaccessioning the books because of lack of circulation.  It meant I got to purchase them for not a whole lot of money.