. >> reporter: hunter morrison is an urban planner who has worked on rebuilding youngstown since 2002. he says the plan started with a simple premise: accept that the city was smaller. >> in america, the entire business of planning and development is based on the phenomena of growth. but what happens when communities one after another see themselves shrinking? >> reporter: over the last 14 years, this new, smaller mindset has been the guiding vision for the city, which took stock of its assets-- like youngstown state university, with 14,000 students. the city and the university developed blighted land to connect the campus to downtown, which now has new housing and more places to go out. >> today, if you talk to a student, they go down to the restaurants. some of them live downtown who never would have lived there before. >> reporter: but beyond downtown, the city didn't have the resources to fix its broken neighborhoods. fewer residents means less tax revenue. so, in 2009, the city created a new nonprofit, the youngstown neighborhood development corporation, or y.n.d.c., in partnersh