What are the limits: gentrification & downtown development?

I'd like to explore the limits of the following on middle size US cities: • gentrification of neighborhoods • developing a vibrant downtown And, in the process, I would like to do it generically. Thus I'd like to examine City X: • population: 615,000 • metro population: 2,461,000 The beauty of City X is that it can fit just as easily in the northeast, the midwest, the south, southwest, or the West City X has gone through some of the successful downtown redevelopments that many cities of its size has experienced. Shops and restaurants have returned downtown in respectable if not spectacular numbers. Some high rise condo building have gone up as well as new hotels. Cultural attractions, enjoyable if not commanding, have helped draw suburbanites and out-of-towners. Light rail has increased transit options. In the process, population, after years of slow decline, has stablized, and outside of the city core, a series of interspersed residential projects are underway....although they are few and far between and aren't really changing the nature of City X's neighborhoods. For all its admirable efforts, City X has not shaken its insular and provencial nature. It does not have the critical mass to attract an art community nor does its job base support the type of super incomes that might become cash cows in larger cities. Immigrants shy away from City X in large numbers as it is hard to establish an ethnic community to meet their needs in such a small city. Meanwhile, City X has not been able to do anything to separate itself from other cities on the make, nor does it have the ability to generate the economic changes that are beyond the ability of civic government or chambers of commerce. As a result, city neighborhoods, while healthier, are hardly giving the impression that they are in a strong state of revival. Like any metro area, that around City X still feels a lure for cheaper land and more open space of suburbia. And City X's suburbanites have an advantage not shared by those in bigger cities: if they want to go downtown, they can still drive there with relative ease, still park affordably, and return home comfortably from a day with far fewer hassles than what they would experience in a larger city. And the truth is, with all of downtown's redevelopment, there isn't that much to keep them downtown for hours on end, even with the new casinos and the three new stadiums (baseball, football, and basketball) that have gone up. Is it just possible that there are severe limits on City X's desire to revive in an age when our cities are more about "life style" than about employment? Are the differences between City X and City Y (population 4,200,000; metro 10,500,000), a global city in its region of the US with a large and vibrant downtown, extensive rapid transit, a long history of strong cultural instittuions, a magnet for international immigrantion and business, an eductional and research powerhouse based on universities and institutes, an attractions for the art community....and on and on and on? In 1940, City X may have been looked at as a smaller version of City Y. In an industrial era, the jobs were plentiful in both places. Life was more about work than life style. Disposable time was limited as were consumer products. Image didn't even make the radar screen. Is this a different world today for the City X's? Are there severe limits to their revival due to their inability to create a critical mass and differentiate themselves from others? Are cities more "tiered" today as a city's image and what it has to offer in ammentiies is more important, in many ways, than the degree of employment it can deliver? Is there a real and unclosable gap between City X and City Y that didn't exist in a simplier time during the first half of the 20th century?>