PITTSBURGH — In the 1950s, the East Liberty neighborhood five miles east of downtown was Pennsylvania’s third-largest shopping district, behind Center City Philadelphia and downtown Pittsburgh, with more than 500 local businesses and a population of 14,000.

The suburbs began to draw residents from the densely populated area in the late 1950s, however, and urban renewal schemes like high-rise public housing and ring roads were enacted to stem the flight. Instead, they drove the area into a 40-year coma. By the 1980s East Liberty had lost more than one million square feet of commercial space and half its population.

Now, two recent major commercial developments have begun to put a still-poor neighborhood back on its feet. New design standards have restored the traditional urban street grid to attract shoppers to national retailers, and a third office and retail project, a converted Nabisco bakery, has landed Google as an anchor tenant.

“Urban renewal has been a recurring theme in East Liberty for the past 50 years,” said Sabina Deitrick, a co-director of the Urban and Regional Analysis Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Yet even as East Liberty foundered, nearby residential districts retained their attractive features. The adjoining neighborhoods of Highland Park, Shadyside and Friendship contain the city’s wealthiest and best-educated households, with an average income of more than $81,000 a year.