Dim Futures for Neglected American Cities

Cities--where markets, the arts, government, sports and popular entertainment all developed--are civilization, in effect. And the dismal state of many of our cities raises questions about the nature of American civilization.

City planning arose in Europe to ameliorate the squalor of urban life in industrialized society. After World War II, most advanced industrial societies adopted national urban policies to manage economic growth, improve the physical and social character of existing cities and plan for entire new cities.

Public transit in and between cities, subsidized public and private housing, preservation of historical buildings and the creation of pedestrian streets and car-free zones in city centers were among the priorities. New satellite cities and garden suburbs were rationally located along transit lines and included industrial sites, schools and child-care facilities.

But the United States, for particular historical and political reasons, developed no similar urban policies; instead, it developed suburban policies. As Columbia University historian Kenneth Jackson superbly shows in his prize-winning book, “Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of America,” federal and state policies actively promoted the growth of white middle- and upper-class suburbs.

Such financial and legal incentives as the National Highway Act, FHA insurance for single-family homes, tax deductibility of home mortgage interest and restrictive zoning practices were all suburban in orientation. The only city-oriented program was urban renewal, chiefly serving downtown real-estate interests, not urban residents. Urban renewal destroyed poor inner-city residential neighborhoods and replaced housing with high-rise offices, convention centers, sports arenas and massive freeways that serve suburban commuters and tourists.

In response to the urban riots of the 1960s, the federal government did develop some community-oriented programs, mainly to quell the growing anger of increasing black populations in major cities. However, the small amount of subsidized urban housing that was built remained segregated by race and class. White flight to the suburbs intensified.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, urban programs, while never a coherent national urban policy, reflected the constituencies of the party in power. Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford cut back on community development and subsidized housing and promoted revenue-sharing for Republican suburbs. Democrat Jimmy Carter tried to develop a national mass-transit policy. His major initiative--Urban Development Action Grants--supported the construction of new downtown hotels and tourist attractions such as festival marketplaces. Action grants are popular with big-city mayors, but the program has done little to improve urban neighborhoods.

The Reagan Administration has tried to abolish all existing urban programs. The Administration would also like to eliminate the welfare system, an essential part of the tattered safety net for urban dwellers. And the Administration often seems unconcerned about the hungry and homeless who now wander the streets of every major American city.

The nation’s mayors, however, cannot ignore the daily realities of urban life--they have to govern it. So the U.S. Conference of Mayors, under the leadership of two black Democrats--Ernest Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans, and Marion Barry, mayor of Washington--issued a comprehensive report this summer calling for a coherent, activist national urban policy.

What do they want? And how likely is the country to heed their advice?

The mayors’ study, “Rebuilding America’s Cities” (Ballinger), advocates a national urban-development bank to finance improvements in the decaying urban infrastructure. It asks for funds to maintain urban mass transit, subsidized housing, urban education and such social services as child care. It proposes targeting additional federal aid to cities with the largest concentrations of poor people. It also discusses the special needs of the elderly, the lack of health insurance for many of the urban poor and the problem of crime, which hits hardest in urban ghettos. The mayors adamantly oppose the Administration plan for educational vouchers as an attack on urban public schools. And predictably, the mayors ask for a slowing or a halt in the rise in military spending.

There is nothing particularly innovative about the report, a liberal Democratic set of programs. But this is not 1965, and Lyndon B. Johnson is not President. The political landscape has changed greatly.

The prospects for anything like the “Rebuilding America’s Cities” program to be adopted in the near future are dim, even if a Democrat is in the White House in 1988. The reason has much to do with shifting political influence.

Between 1975 and 1980, 80 of 153 large cities lost population. Today, only 25% of America’s white population lives in central cities. New urban migrants are increasingly Latino or Asian; many are not citizens. According to the Congressional Quarterly, there are currently only 79 urban congressional districts, while there are 228 suburban and 128 rural districts. As recently as 1970, cities had a 148-to-144-seat advantage over suburbs. Most voters and most new industry are in the suburbs. It is unlikely that a President or Congress will find it politically advantageous to sponsor new and expensive urban initiatives.

A similar assessment was reached last month in Denver at the National Urban Policy Conference--a meeting that brought together current and former federal urban officials, as well as liberal and conservative urban-policy experts. Prof. Bernard Frieden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a study of recent downtown development in major cities, concluded that while there is plenty of economic activity--mainly office construction--most new office jobs are going to suburbanites.

Marshall Kaplan, dean of the University of Colorado Graduate School of Public Affairs, feels the best hope is a “non-urban urban policy.” Under such an approach, federal aid would go to needy people rather than places, to include a large role for local government as well as private groups.

“When politics is not in favor of cities, how do you aid cities in need with some equity?” asked Kaplan, a housing and urban-development official in the Carter Administration. He believes that the most effective approach now is to work for national policies that assist the poor directly--which would also help many urban areas that have a large share of poor people. Kaplan advocates tax reform that eliminates taxes for the poor; welfare reform that stresses jobs and job training, and changes in Medicaid so that the working poor are covered by health insurance.

Even with these reforms, most central cities would continue to decline, and there is no guarantee that suburbs would welcome poor or working-class minorities able to pull themselves out of the ghetto. It is not a hopeful prospect, but may be the best we can get right now.

American politics goes in cycles of public concern and liberal activism, of public indifference and conservative reaction. It is important to keep cities on the public agenda, even if on the back burner, as the mayors’ report and Kaplan’s conference have done, for the next cycle.

In the past, two kinds of events have produced large changes in public attitudes and public policy: a catastrophe such as the Depression or a moral awakening accompanied by mass action such as the civil-rights movement.

Awakening is to be preferred, a realization of our deep-seated, often racially-based urban problems leading to the worthy task of rebuilding cities--and making them places that match the best ideals and hopes of America.