Next time you’re tempted to bemoan Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s highly centralized – and occasionally ham-fisted – urban development policies, take a long, hard look southwest at the city of Hartford, Conn., and be happy we actually have a coherent development policy at all.

The folks at Newton-based Northland Investment Corp. took a big gamble on Hartford years ago. Northland wound up owning nearly a third of the Connecticut capital’s central business district, scooped up at bargain prices. Today, those bets have more or less paid off for Northland.

But for those who thought the developer’s lucky streak would extend to the city as a whole, let’s just say that the dice are coming up craps.

For years, Northland executives brought a bit of swagger to a city that has lost its personality. They were buying up buildings left and right, and talking big about their vision of Hartford’s revival.

It was the kind of stump speech that people wanted to believe. If the big money boys from Boston were doubling down on the Insurance City, didn’t that mean that prosperity would soon follow?

But they were listening to Harold Hill’s squeaky trumpets, and hearing a grand marching band. Northland has been no savior for Hartford. It shuttered the boutique and beautiful Goodwin Hotel in the city center. Its first bargain-basement purchase – Metro Center – has been lost to foreclosure. Its CityPlace II ownership is also going the receivership route.

But don’t be fooled: Northland long ago recouped its original investments in these buildings. Northland knew what it was doing, even if Hartford as a whole did not. It bought cheap, took its money out early, then waited for the next Bigger Fool to come along.

But while it was waiting, the bigger fool turned out to be Hartford itself. This is a city with no central planning, no vision, no leadership, no direction and no discernible future. In the middle part of the past decade, when easy money acted like development Viagra, and when the buzz was all about urban living revival, Northland built a massive residential and retail project in the heart of Hartford’s downtown.

Northland’s moves were mirrored by other developers, who took every dime from every clueless lender possible. And the city of Hartford encouraged it all. But what was really happening? Hartford got it all asset backwards. The central city was filling its business district with apartments and condominiums. Meanwhile, all the employers were relocating to the suburbs.

So these new urbanites were stuck living in apartments that were near nothing. The work was elsewhere, and so were they most of the day. And when they come back to their city apartments, they were surrounded by empty office buildings, vacant storefronts and a sole Starbucks that isn’t even open on Sundays.

Contrast that with Downtown Boston, where a healthy mix of old brownstones and gleaming residential towers blend seamlessly with office space to attract residents and workers alike to patronize the multitude of boutiques, cafes and galleries sprinkled throughout the vibrant city.

So what of Hartford? The site of what was once going to be a huge new mixed-use development was just sold for $1 million – far less than its $3.5 million assessed value. The city is “enjoying” a downtown vacancy rate of more than 30 percent. Companies continue to flee to cheaper suburban locations.

And Northland? Well, it just got word that Citizens Bank is renewing its loan for the big residential and retail development – not that Citizens really has much choice. The original City Place – bigger than its distressed, conjoined sibling, CityPlace II – was just put on the market. With that building full (just about the only full building in Hartford), investors have decided to cut and run with whatever cash they can get.

They’re smart. And they’re smarter, certainly, than the elected officials of the Insurance City, who don’t seem to have any policy in place to protect it from economic ruin, instead rubber stamping the tall tales trumpeted by traveling real estate salesmen.