This year's presidential campaign has not involved the "urban decline" rhetoric that rallied politicians - and policymakers - to the cause of cities in the mid 1960s and late 1970s. Instead, as Alex MacGillis pointed out in Sunday's WaPo, Senator Obama
"has adopted the framing increasingly favored by many mayors and urban-policy types - promoting America's cities based on their strengths, not their failings."
This framing involves a slight shift of perspective from urban cores to metro areas. In many ways, this optimistic view of cities as nestled within metros (which aren't as politically, or racially, charged as cities) is productive. Economics backs up the sunny view, as MacGillis notes, with the majority of the nation's GDP generated and of its population and jobs located in metro areas.
But the champions of the metro perspective fail to defend the political relationship - the partnership - that is necessary between the federal government and cities. In interviewing mayors from cities across the country, I have consistently heard that cities will not truly prosper until mayors are provided more substantive opportunities to influence federal policy. This influence would extend beyond calls for more funds for the CDBG and COPS programs to provide mayors and other parochial officials occasions to highlight model local policies and coordinate with state officers and, indeed, with other officials inside their metro area.
Mayors have already joined together in ad hoc groups to meet Kyoto Protocol targets and in official organizations like the Conference of Mayors, but they have little formal means to influence federal policy. If mayors are heard at all, they are heard to be begging for money; if they receive money, they often receive too little or are constrained in its use. Providing mayors a platform for influence, exchange, and coordination - similar to Senator Obama's White House Office of Urban Policy - would capitalize on the economic power of metro areas while restoring urban policy to its proper place in national discourse. At its best, this would mean strengthening the power and authority of mayors at the federal level--something that Obama's transition team should embrace.
In today's WSJ, June Kronholz points out that few mayors become president. They have often been overlooked when they should be empowered. Today, mayors nationwide overwhelmingly want the next presidential administration to reverse that trend.
A recent interview DMI's MayorTV did with Mayor Dannel Malloy of Stamford, CT explores the much-needed political partnership between cities and the federal government. Check it out.
As final preparations for the last presidential debate are made - water glasses weighed and secret memoranda consulted - both candidates have revamped their economic plans for the economic crisis now gripping the country.
McCain was uncertain, at first, about whether to release a revised plan. But even after deciding that certain "economic news and conditions" demanded such action, he seems to have omitted several critical elements from the proposal. No, if you were concerned, he remembered to include a cut in the capital gains tax. And yes, if you're worried he was going soft, he will employ a surge strategy to prevent foreclosures.
(One of the most devastating consequences of Bush Administration policy--not just the financial meltdown we are now experiencing--has been the systematic neglect of state and local governments, which have suffered two of the worst financial crunches in history under Bush. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The financial crisis has dug in its heels and Treasury's plan to buy up troubled assets hasn't been able to dislodge them. There have been numerous reports that the crisis has spread outward from Wall Street to afflict auto dealerships and the commercial paper that businesses and public institutions use to meet payroll. But when The New York Timesreported last week that cities, states, and local governments are having difficulty in bond markets - stoking fears that infrastructure projects, services, and payrolls will have to be canceled or scaled back - MayorTV decided to set off to several cities to ask mayors how the financial downturn is affecting them.
Our first stop was Stamford, Connecticut where Mayor Dannel Malloy was anything but optimistic about the economy.
Much of the evidence for this "infrastructural maturity" results from a 2005 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) that gave America's infrastructure an average of a D on its Infrastructure Report Card. Grades ranged from a D- for drinking water systems (there is a wide funding gap for improvements, particularly in urban centers) and navigable waterways (half the nation's locks are functionally obsolete) to a relief-inspiring C+ for solid waste (the number of landfills has declined, but mammoth regional fills have replaced them). The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) outlined similar concerns in its 2006 "Guiding Principles for Strengthening America's Infrastructure": aviation traffic will grow 39% by 2016, freight tonnage will increase 50% by 2020, and severe highway bottlenecks have already increased 40% in the last five years, but the structures that support these systems are deteriorating. 13,000 fatalities result each year from inadequate maintenance of highways, $63.2 billion are lost to traffic on the roadways, and $9 billion are lost to aviation delays.
Despite the ASCE's empirical evidence and our intuitive sense (when was the last time you sat bumper-to-bumper with an SUV or stood jowl-to-jowl with someone in the subway) that infrastructure is aging and inadequate, no large-scale effort has been undertaken to confront the problem in a comprehensive and purposeful manner. Even after a bridge collapsed in Minnesota , a steam pipe burst in New York City, and levees broke in New Orleans, attempts to mend our bridges, highways, and waterways still stall because of bureaucratic strife and ineffective funding.
What often hinders large-scale infrastructure projects is not the knowledge that such projects are necessary or the lack of technical skill to carry them out. Rather, when politicians and government agencies tackle endeavors of such proportions, priorities clash, funding streams are challenged, and reputations are put on the line (For an international example, see Chile's Transantiago bus service. Transantiago was designed to be self-financing, but is now expected to cost $40 million a month.). This means that massive construction plans become as much about individual personalities and personal ambition as about concrete, steel girders, and getting a car across the Hudson River. As Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution remarked at a congressional hearing on ground transportation, "The sad fact is that now that the Interstate Highway System is completed there is no coherent national vision for addressing a complex and conflicting set of transportation challenges. As a result, America's transportation policy is adrift with no clear goals, purpose, or ability to meet these challenges."
A unique solution to the bureaucratic and financial problems that often beset large-scale infrastructure projects has been proposed by Senators Chris Dodd and Chuck Hagel. On the morning of the Minnesota bridge collapse, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert pointed out, the senators announced their sponsorship of legislation to create a National Infrastructure Bank. The Bank would issue bonds to raise funds for infrastructure projects that would be selected based on a strict set of criteria. Applications would be accepted only for projects that cost at least $75 million, have a public sponsor (a state or local government), and are of regional or national significance. The Bank would then rate each application based on its promotion of economic growth, its mobility improvements, its reduction of poverty concentration, its environmental benefits, its potential to promote smart urban growth, and its regional or national significance (the criteria vary slightly for each type of infrastructure project).
