Rochester's troubles go beyond Kodak. Xerox and Bausch & Lomb have shed thousands of jobs as well. Twenty-five years ago, the three companies employed 60 percent of Rochester's work force. Today, it is 6 percent. "Part of my job is convincing people we aren't the place we once were," Mayor Thomas S. Richards said. The most painful toll is in the city itself, where the population has dropped to 210,000 from a peak of 332,000 in 1950, and where vast stretches north of downtown are dreary acres of decay. And while job growth has been strong, wages have declined from well above the national average at Kodak's peak to below it now, reflecting the dwindling of well-paying factory jobs. But beyond the urban core, in sparkling new office parks and research labs, at the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology and the local medical complexes, Rochester remains quite robust, in no small part because of the legacy Kodak and other faded industrial giants left behind.