ABSTRACT
The Pueblo's story is very much a case study of how political modernization resulted in the formation of public capital primarily through reforming local government, developing the community's physical infrastructure, and planning for the region's future. Public capital is the collection of policy instruments that city governments have at their disposal to encourage, control, or complement development. Between 1960 and 1976, Pueblo's local economy underwent a profound change—the first in a two-stage process of diversification that continued through the mid-1990s and which other industrial cities were simultaneously experiencing in varying ways throughout the greater Northeast and Midwest. In the 1980s, the industrial park would become prime property in the mobilization of public capital for economic development that brought thousands of jobs to the park. Pueblo, Colorado, is an industrial city that survived the deep manufacturing recessions of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
