This is how provincial I am: I didn’t know until a few weeks ago that Columbus, Ohio—the state’s capital and by far its most populous city—is a gleaming metropolis. Of course, I knew of it as home to The Ohio State University and had even been there once almost 20 years ago for a conference.

But until I was in Columbus again a few weeks ago with Deb and Jim Fallows to report for the American Futures series, I had no idea what a beautiful and interesting place it is. Until learning more about the city, I was one of those people who appended "Ohio" to any reference to Columbus, thereby unwittingly annoying the locals to no end. But I'm now reformed.

We visited Columbus to test some of what we’ve been finding in smaller cities against a bigger-city example. More specific observations to come over the next few weeks, but one thing we can say upfront: Columbus is in a sweet spot with respect to size. As one local business leader told us, "Columbus is big enough to have scale and small enough to do something with it."

In other words, this is a city that works. There are powerful business leaders and public officials in Columbus (and I mean"big-city" powerful), but the city is small enough that they all know each other and are able to work well together and make things happen. The particular story I want to tell here—and will follow up on in a subsequent piece—is how, through the attention of a strong mayor, public-private partnerships, and the determination of a lot of people, Columbus is making progress toward resuscitating its poorest, most blighted neighborhood.

If you’re coming from Columbus’s south side and driving up High Street, which is the city’s main north-south axis, you see an impressive array of attractive skyscrapers, many of them headquarters to huge national corporations such as Nationwide Insurance and a large number of other big companies. The state capital building and the new Columbus Commons park are within a couple of blocks, too.

But just downhill and across the Scioto River from that prosperous, thriving, vibrant city center—not even a quarter-mile to the west—sits the most deprived and destitute part of town, a neighborhood known as Franklinton. It’s an interesting (but not all that uncommon) geographic paradox: the poorest part of the city has the best, close-up views of its imposing skyline.

Franklinton is the site of the first settlement in Columbus, established in 1797. In fact, it’s the site of the first community of settlers in the whole central-Ohio region. It goes way, way back.

Unfortunately, those early settlers built their community on the wrong side of the Scioto River—the west side, which turns out to be a floodplain. Fast-forward over time, and you get—mirabile dictu!—floods. A horrific flood in 1913 submerged the area under 22 feet of water, killed 93 people, and left 20,000 homeless in the area. Nearly five decades later, in 1959, another flood rendered 10,000 people homeless.

For decades, the Franklinton area was tagged with the derogatory nickname “The Bottoms,” because it is below river level and because it long has been home to those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

It wasn’t until 1983 that the city and the Federal Emergency Management Agency officially declared the area a floodplain, essentially stopping all building and development in this part of Columbus, which lies directly below and across the river from the center of the city.

In 1993, the city of Columbus and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started a joint city/federal project to build a floodwall along a seven-mile stretch of the Scioto River, protecting Franklinton from future floods. It took eleven years and $129 million, but the floodwall’s completion was surely the most important single step toward the revitalization and redevelopment of the Franklinton community, because it’s now possible to get flood insurance and construction permits there.