BIRMINGHAM, Ala.  This city was founded, quite deliberately, in the late 19th century by a group of industrialists who wanted to capitalize on proximity to vast deposits of coal, iron and limestone. But after a period of prosperity and growth, Birmingham was brought to its knees by the Depression and wracked by the end of segregation.

Birmingham has never fully recovered its prominence. Its population today, 230,000, is less than it was in 1930.

Now, a descendant of one of Birmingham’s founders is trying to invigorate a section of the city and bring people and businesses back to the urban core. Catherine Sloss Crenshaw, whose great-great-grandfather James Withers Sloss was a prominent iron manufacturer, has bought numerous properties in the Lakeview district with the goal of creating a design-centered destination.

Lakeview flourished as a light industrial area in the 1930s to the 1960s, but as white flight took hold in the city, and as industry declined, many of its buildings were abandoned. “If you drove down these streets in 1988,” Ms. Crenshaw said, “there was no rhyme or reason to how the buildings related to downtown, or to each other. Now there is a master plan and an identity.”