Rochester is becoming a bit of a fishbowl for people who study cities that are trying to reinvent themselves.

"Cities like Rochester get studied to death," says John Parr, "and some great ideas come out of it. But where they run into difficulty is in the implementation of those ideas."

Parr, an attorney and co-founder of the Denver-based Center for Regional and Neighborhood Action, was in town last week as part the "Re-Shaping Rochester" series sponsored by the Rochester Regional Community Design Center, the local American Institute of Architects chapter, and Preferred Care. Parr has taught at Harvard, MIT, and UCLA. And he talked about the lessons he learned from "Blueprint Denver," the civic planning project that resulted in a major redevelopment of that city's downtown, including 7 miles of light rail.

He says there is no question that many of the cities that embraced consolidation and regionalism 10 to 15 years ago are the ones experiencing rebirth today. But most attempts at consolidation fail, he said. To understand why, Parr points to a study by Suzanne Leland of the University of North Carolina and Kurt Thurmaier of Iowa State University, "When Efficiency is Unbelievable: Lessons from 30 Years of City-County Consolidations," which first appeared in Public Administration Review in 2005.

Three circumstances, the authors say, are needed before consolidation can occur: a crisis climate seeking radical reform, civic unrest over inadequate responsiveness from political leaders, and a catalytic event that kick-starts change.

The biggest obstacles: law enforcement agencies and public officials, who aggressively try to protect their territory.

"My argument is that places like Rochester are going to continue to be stuck where they are until they come up with a regional strategy," Parr says. "Consolidation works. Regionalism works. But as long as you talk about cutting taxes and combining services to raise money, it's a non-starter. You need to develop a regional vision with a strategy for implementation, because that's how you get results, and people understand results when they see them."

Parr says the cities he's seen struggling with economic development are usually going about it the wrong way. They are using models that worked 40 to 50 years ago, but are ineffective for today's global economy.

"They're really trying to steal jobs away from other markets, including the communities in their own region, and that's a zero-sum game," he says. "It really struck me that in almost every other depressed market I've visited, regional economic development was the highest priority. But when I asked what was being done here, no one was really able to give a cohesive response. No one was able to point to one organization as the entity driving a strategy for rebuilding this community. It seemed a little bizarre to me that no one recognized this."

Rochester's strong base of higher education, underutilized real estate --- including waterfront property --- and the right combination of intellectual and cultural resources are, in Parr's view, better assets than most cities have to build on. Successfully implementing a regional strategy requires an ability for governments, businesses, non-profits, and citizens groups to work in partnerships, he says.

"It's not about the institutions," he says. "It's about the strength of the network."