In Search of a Real Urban Policy

This morning, the NY Times posted an Op-Ed piece discussing the need to bring some urgency to urban issues for this year’s political debates.

Courtesy of B.E.L.T. via STLtoday.com

It’s not a new problem. For more than a generation, presidential aspirants have mostly resisted acknowledging the importance of the cities’ well being. Blame the front-loading of the primary season with rural states, or electoral and legislative systems that give disproportionate weight to sparsely populated states. Whatever the reason, it is shortsighted. According to Bruce Katz, co-author of a Brookings Institution study promoting investment in metropolitan areas, the largest 100 cities and their surrounding communities are home to 65 percent of the nation’s population and account for about 75 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The NY Times makes several poignant points here:

• there needs to be a shift in transportation policy
• Republicans ignore cities because they historically vote for Democrats
• Democrats dabble with urban agendas, but lack a “comprehensive vision for urban America”
• Mayors and governors have had to fill the gaps

…the sad truth [is] that states and cities have been forced to assume more fiscal obligations from Washington while getting fewer of their citizens’ tax dollars. There can be no substitute for national leadership. The president must provide it, and Americans deserve to know how the candidates would step up to the challenge.

Now, your opinion of whether our government can afford to inject more money into cities likely hinges on your views of foreign policy. However, these are pressing concerns. As population continues to grow in our metropolitan areas, under-funding will exponentially deteriorate the situation.

If you need a domestic example of this already happening, you don’t need to look any further than the water crisis in Atlanta. Interactive Water Watch via the AJC.

To understand how extreme these problems can get, there are several examples internationally. Due to the explosive population growth and the accelerated shift from rural growth to urban growth in cities across China or Lagos, Nigeria, they are having phenomenal infrastructural problems.

For these reasons, I think urban issues should have already been playing a major role in the debates, and must be urgently considered through the rest of the political season.

Article
In Search of a Real Urban Policy, NY Times.

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