Our cities are no longer what they once were. Over the course of fifty years the once proud, strong and vital centers of American economic prowess are but a shell of what they were built to do. The problems of many cities are no longer condensed at the city limits, and the sprawl that was created over that fifty-year period now threatens to enter the suburban spaces that were created when the citizens left. Metropolitan sprawl is starting to lose its appeal, and unless there is greater recognition of the problems emerging from these cities, the same declining trends will create vacant commercial and residential districts not unlike the downtowns of many American cities . Without careful discussion of these trends and our communities adopting a more regional approach, there will be more problems in less dense suburban areas, making those problems difficult to correct. To prevent the spread of this urban decay and avoid low employment rates, communities must implement regional fiscal policies, plan for more effective use of space, and encourage smart growth. Regionalism is the act of looking at a populated area and not as individual localities or municipalities, but as something larger. Instead of focusing our revitalization efforts on one area, problems should be addressed regionally. This has been an ongoing topic of debate since the beginning of suburban sprawl that created communities outside of our cities. In fact, it has been somewhat overshadowed by the growing popularity of city revitalization efforts through public and private development efforts. The rebirth of the city is only a small part of what regionalism represents. Charles Clark, author of the CQ Researcher article “Revitalizing… at the center of the paper… the city has become much larger than anyone would have imagined. It is not just an urban area that has its problems concentrated, these problems are now directly involved with its suburban partners. The sooner this is accomplished, the sooner Americans can get to work growing their areas in smart, solid ways. The sooner communities share in the revenue generated by non-resident municipal traffic, the sooner they will be able to directly participate in all that their regions can create and offer. The sooner space is used effectively within existing boundaries, the sooner communities can function as one larger neighborhood. As cities continue to grow, they will also continue to expand. The only way to ensure that this function works for the good of all those who share its services is to implement regionalism in our government policies.