The Cornell University Library has created a digital collection on the subject "Progressive Cities and Neighborhood Planning." It consists of selections from and related to the physical collection of that name in the Library's Rare and Manuscript Collections.

The collection topic arises from the increasing inequities in modern societies and their implications for urban communities and neighborhoods. The research strategy in these studies has been to focus on cases where cities and neighborhood institutions have attempted redistributive policies and actions to reverse this trend. The hypothesis is that such policies and actions will reveal maldistributive mechanisms and point a path toward their reversal. The purpose of the present collections is to assemble and document the history of such efforts.

The physical collection in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections is housed at Cornell's Kroch Library, and its holdings are described in the online collection guide. Electronic copies of key documents from within and related to the physical collection are distributed here to provide wider public examination of them. The electronic collection is divided by topics covering diverse cities, neighborhoods within cities, organizations, and people.

There is also a web site, www.progressivecities.org, which posts commentary from time to time.