Manufacturing policy and urban and regional policy coexist uncomfortably in the United States. Although many industrialized nations coordinate federal-level technology and innovation strategies with expressly place-based investments in the commercialization of basic research – and, concomitantly, with support for regional networks of small and medium-sized manufacturers – such mechanisms have not been a prominent feature of U.S. policy (Clark 2010).I argue in this chapter that this gap between scales of action in U.S. policy-making makes the project of manufacturing redevelopment in cities problematic. Because of the “missing region,” municipal authorities struggle to meaningfully affect changes in the policy areas most compelling in the national policy discourse. Meanwhile, the national government’s main areas of focus – producer networks, commercialization, technology transfer, and workforce readiness – become subordinate on the local level to officials’ necessary preoccupation with real estate markets and barriers to site development