How to build a destination out of urban decay In most instances of gentrification, a new influx of residents?typically more affluent, and often white?displaces existing dwellers in tandem with rising home prices. Things aren?t so cut-and-dry in cities where a hollowed-out industrial core yields an influx of bourgeois amenities.
Once the seat of the manufacturing revolution, Pittsburgh is undergoing a renaissance as a hotspot for first-time homebuyers. Meanwhile, Denver is creating a new destination neighborhood with the help of sports and beer, and Louisville?s art and architecture may have finally hit the tipping point as a locus of regional pride.

Pittsburgh

Written by Jessica Dailey
Photos by Kristian Thacker
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The sandwich board reads "Roses," in rough hand lettering, "Only $6 a bunch!" The sign stands in front of a long row of parked cars, pulled perpendicular to the street, nosing up to the elevated platform of a low-slung building known as the produce terminal.
The pink brick building stretches for five city blocks, from the 16th Street Bridge on one side, with downtown?s skyscrapers rising behind, to the 125-year-old Romanesque St. Stanislaus Church at 21st Street.

A rose vendor occupies the only active bay at the Pennsylvania Railroad Fruit Auction and Sales Building in Pittsburgh's Strip District.

Opened in 1926, the building was once the epicenter of Pittsburgh?s wholesale prod...