Conejo, I truly sympathize with you, as Japanese documents on urban regeneration and city planning are chock full of wayward phrases like this. In my experience, trying to stick to the original Japanese phraseology in documents like this is a great way to get a migrane.

The best you can do is swallow the sentence, then spit it back out in normal English.

I interpretted 身の才にあった as "appropriate to local conditions" or "appropriate to local capabilities"

身: one's self, one's "nearby body / constituent"...so in this case, just "local" or "local community" I think is fine.

才 is "ability" or "capability" but I think given the gist of the sentence, just using a catch-all phrase like "conditions" is fine.

So then, here goes:

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Faced with the recent issue of accelerated depopulation occurring our rural areas, it is up to us to try to address the income gap between rural and urban areas by aiming for regional revitilazation intiatives that seek to develop safe and self-sufficient communities on smaller administrative scales in rural districts that are appropriate to local conditions, without simply focussing on revitalization in urban areas.
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A run-on? Yeah, but I think captures what the author is saying without leaving anything out.

I hope this helps...I would like to hear the opinions of others.

Troy

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Note added at 2 hrs (2007-12-01 06:02:42 GMT)
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Oops! I realize I was reading the kanji wrong. I thought it said "才"　（さい）　not ”丈”　（じょう）...Sorry.

(I guess my answer is still more or less in the ball park, though.)