The mission of the "Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects" series is to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing the key social and economic problems facing today's cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas.

Volume four of the series introduces and examines thoroughly the concept of regional resilience, explaining how resilience can be promoted --or impeded --by regional characteristics and public policies.

The authors illuminate how the walls that now segment metropolitan regions across political jurisdictions and across institutions --and the gaps that separate federal laws from regional realities --have to be bridged in order for regions to cultivate resilience.

Contributors: Patricia Atkins, George Washington University; Pamela Blumenthal, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Sarah Ficenec, George Washington University; Alec Friedhoff, Brookings Institution; Kathryn Foster, University at Buffalo, SUNY; Juliet Gainsborough, Bentley University; Edward Hill, Cleveland State University; Kate Lowe, Cornell University; John Mollenkopf, Graduate Center, City University of New York; Mai Nguyen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California; Rolf Pendall, Urban Institute; Nancy Pindus, Urban Institute; Sarah Reckhow, Michigan State University; Travis St. Clair, George Washington University; Todd Swanstrom, University of Missouri, St. Louis; Margaret Weir, University of California, Berkeley; Howard Wial, Brookings Institution; Harold Wolman, George Washington University

"Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects," the second in a series, sets out to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars about the effectiveness of select policy approaches, reforms, and experiments in addressing key social and economic problems facing cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. The chapters analyze responses to six key policy challenges that most metropolitans areas and local communities face:

- Creating quality neighborhoods for families

- Governing effectively

- Building human capital

- Growing the middle class

- Growing a competitive economy through industry-based strategies

- Managing the spatial pattern of metropolitan growth and development

Each chapter discusses a specific policy topic under one of these challenges. The authors present the essence of what is known, as well as the likely implications, and identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled for the successful formulation and implementation of urban and regional policy.

Contributors: Karen Chapple and Rick Jacobus (University of California, Berkeley and Burlington Associates), Jeffrey R. Henig and Elisabeth Thurston Fraser (Teachers College, Columbia University), W. Norton Grubb (University of California, Berkeley), Harry J. Holzer (Georgetown University and Urban Institute), Susan Christopherson and Michael H. Belzer (Cornell University and Wayne State University), and Rolf Pendall (Cornell University)