Making choices on how to use scarce dollars available for public investment in revitalization

In the New York Times, an op-ed by Mitchell Moss of New York University states that "Struggling Towns Must Evolve or Die." From the article:

The entire state cannot survive if we continue to act as if all 62 counties can flourish. Yet that’s how our political and fiscal systems work — as upstate shrinks, it commands a higher and higher per capita chunk of the state budget. New York City taxpayers send billions of dollars upstate for unnecessary shopping malls, transportation projects and prisons, giving new meaning to the phrase “welfare state.” Meanwhile, vital upgrades to transportation and public services essential to accommodate the expanding New York City area are deferred.

While from a rational planning standpoint, it makes sense to focus public resources where the investment can have the most impact, from a political standpoint, making "life or death" decisions about communities is practically impossible.

And yes, that means that the areas with the potential to thrive find achieving success is more difficult, because they are starved for resources as well.

I think it is only when a community is absolutely desperate (i.e., Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Flint, Michigan) can these kinds of decisions be made. At that is at the scale of neighborhoods, not the entire community.

Being up in PA at the moment to go to Olde Good Things (an architectural salvage place), you can see the difficulties in the question when looking at the Pennsylvania communities of York, Lancaster, and Scranton. Of the three, Lancaster is thriving. That's because it has a truly functioning local economy. (I wonder how much the Amish and Mennonites influence the retention of local manufacturing--once with a farmer who sells in a farmers market I used to manage, I stopped by at an Amish farm implement manufacturer...) Scranton doesn't "show well" compared to either, and York's Downtown hasn't revitalized to the same extent as Lancaster's. BUT, York even though it keeps losing companies, is still a relatively strong manufacturing center, which means that it is a good source of jobs.

I haven't been to upstate New York in a long time, but a similar kind of assessment can likely be made there, and ought to be when you have to divvy up a shrinking and always limited source of funds.

In the meantime, casinos and gaming are seen as the savior for such communities (e.g., Bethelem, Pennsyvlvania, post the closing of the Bethlehem Steel Works).