It’s still unclear what Barack Obama’s Office of Urban Policy will do. On his campaign website, the president-elect makes the amorphous promise that whoever holds the position will “develop a strategy for metropolitan America and … ensure that all federal dollars targeted to urban areas are effectively spent on the highest-impact programs.” Bearing in mind that a bunch of departments and agencies deal directly or tangentially with issues that effect urban America (HUD, Transportation, the EPA, Labor, Agriculture, HHS), it’s important that the new “urban czar” not get bogged down in what Ezra Klein calls “turf wars.”
I like a suggestion put forth by The American Prospect’s Dana Goldstein. “[W]hat Washington needs is less a day-to-day manager of urban programs,” she writes, “than an outspoken advocate on behalf of urbanism.” This is a valuable point. Even though the vast majority of Americans live in or near cities, the federal government has failed to offer an affirmative argument (much less a forward-thinking policy agenda) for why the health of cities is vital to the nation’s long-term economic, social, and environmental stability. Putting someone within earshot of the president who is fluent in the language of both urban poverty and regional planning reform would help ensure the new administration focuses effectively on these pressing issues of human geography.
Goldstein highlights two policies such an officer could champion. One is near and dear to the heart of most Illinois progressives: working with the Department of Education and local governments to encourage states to revisit school-funding formulas. The second is getting the federal government to lean on cities to enact congestion pricing schemes. While Chicago hasn’t committed fully to any such plan, the city seems to be moving in the right direction with the development in April of a new rapid Bus Rapid Transit network and a variable rate parking meter system downtown.
I’ll suggest a third issue just begging for attention: incarceration. We’re not going to solve the enduring problem of urban poverty and violence until we end the failed drug war. Luckily, an array of policies already exist that can reverse the nation’s drive toward mass imprisonment in humane fashion. What’s lacking is the political will to fund and promote such solutions.
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