Obama’s urban push: Good for all?

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President Obama has been called the first urban president.

Adolfo Carrion is the first White House director of urban affairs.

The former borough president from New York and schoolteacher is overseeing a White House policy of ensuring that investments ‘reflect the reality of modern urban America.’’

‘What’s true of the United States is even truer of the rest of the world. The majority of the world’s population is now living in the cities,’’ Carrion said today at the Bloomberg Washington Summit at the Newseum. ‘This urban discussion that we’re having about how the president asked us to invest [in the cities more intelligently] has global implications.’’

What’s the message for rural America, then? ‘What’s good for urban, suburban, exurban America ... is good for rural America,’’ he said.

Also, ‘there’s been a shift in the definition of what urban is,’’ said Carrion, who served as borough president, in the Bronx, a community of 1.4 million.

‘Our challenge is that we slow down the urban sprawl and continue to urge people to move into urban areas,’’ he added.

Asked about Obama’s role as the urban president, Carrion said, ‘He is on a very short list of presidents who get ‘the urban thing.’ ... He is a lover of cities. That informs everything that we do.’’

-- Mark Silva