In Search of an Urban Policy

...New buildings, paid for by both local and Federal dollars, necessarily served large districts in the sprawling new communities, making costly busing necessary...

...For instance, the 22-year-old, $100-billion Interstate Highway project, when completed in a few more years, will have constructed 9,300 miles of freeways in urban areas at a cost of $55.3 billion...

...No one seems to want to know, for example, how many of the people funded by the Labor Department's Comprehensive Employment and Training Act are actually local government employes being paid with ceta funds...

...This calls for Washington to request a "comprehensive growth strategy" from each state, and to award major new Federal grants to the states implementing approved strategies...

...Once the vacant land became affordable, the demand for Helen Leavitt, a past contributor, is a Washington-based freelance writer...

...But given the political realities of this town, if Carter merely succeeds in reordering the priorities of existing urban programs he will have scored a significant victory...

...housing that accompanied the population spurt of the late '40s and early '50s started transforming former truck farmland and rural fields into grand suburban communities...

...In contrast, a relatively modest package last year brought impressive results...

...But he urged acceptance of a plan put forward by the National Governors' Association that has been endorsed by the NLC...

...Each past program, no matter how counterproductive, has its boosters in some committee on the Hill, for at present most funding sprinkles dollars across every congressional district...

...Twenty-four cities with high crime rates were each awarded $200,000 under the Career Criminal Program, to help local prosecutors expedite the trials of repeat offenders—and the serious crime rate in the participating cities was dramatically reduced...

...So once again, Washington became the focus for solutions...

...Nevertheless, sewage treatment problems mounted...

...Geographical differences in per capita income, cost of living, productivity per dollar, and relative unionization have recently declined, thereby lessening the incentives for businesses to relocate (although conditions continue to be more favorable in the South...

...And state-approved industrial revenue bonds have often been used by industry less as a means of economic growth than as a vehicle to flee from central cities to outlying industrial parks...

...Roger Vaughan, the Rand study's chief researcher, noted that direct spending on goods and services by Washington has neglected the Northeast and Midwest in favor of other regions where Federal tax receipts fall short of expenditures...

...He pointed out that states administer the bulk of Federal funds for such basic public facilities as roads, sewers and parks, and that their own contributions in these areas outstrip Washington's...

...That will be exactly a year from the date Carter set up the Urban and Regional Policy Group (URPG), headed by Housing and Urban Development (hud) Secretary Patricia R. Harris and Assistant Secretary Robert Em-bry...

...He knows, said the staffer, that since 1968 the Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration has spent $6 billion to stem the spiraling urban crime rate...

...The task force's findings were soon seconded by the first of a four-volume Rand Corporation study...

...The consequent residential development not only spawned shopping malls that took customers away from downtown centers, it eventually lured entire industries...

...Interestingly, Vaughan could find little evidence that high city taxes have driven firms out, or that low taxes elsewhere have attracted them...

...The Rand study emphasized that since the most important single influence on patterns of migration has been conditions in labor markets, Federal policies affecting local economic growth exert a profound influence on population distribution...

...this implied to the Rand people that contrary to the accepted wisdom, many jobs follow people to such areas, rather than the reverse...

...And while Federal manpower programs are clearly intended to improve the lot of the central city unemployed, Vaughan believes their overall effectiveness may be less than meets the eye...

...For it presented millions of citydwellers with the opportunity to purchase homes on individual lots rather than remain in cluster apartment communities...

...As the population spread out, sewer and water facilities were extended at great cost...

...One Domestic Council staff member points out, too, that where Congress has a firm belief in the eternal benefits of spending, Carter is skeptical of the idea that money can solve everything...

...To begin with, it is virtually impossible to avoid stepping on many of the 5,350 toes of Congress...

...The over 40-year-old Federal Housing Administration similarly encouraged the mass urban exodus...

...Before long, local treasuries found it difficult to provide not only this but other services, and the suburbs got on line with the cities for Federal aid...

...The result has been a still greater Federal expense—$42 billion committed through 1982 to clean up rivers and other depositories of poorly treated waste water...

...School construction continued the patterri...

...On March 15, the President is expected, first, to reiterate the proposals for employment, housing and economic development that appeared in his budget message, and then to announce the centerpiece of his new urban policy: probably some additional job training programs and possibly a commitment of $2 billion to low-cost financing of center city industry (in response, especially, to the Congressional Black Caucus...

...There was a general recognition, first of all, that the flexibility and control of existing programs had to be improved...

...Patricia Harris further stressed the importance of creating jobs, strengthening local economies, and linking public training projects to private-sector employment requirements...

...Yet it applies perfectly to America's cities, where Federally-administered cures have often had consequences worse than the original diseases...

...Last November it produced an unpublished draft report (the final report is to be issued the day of the President's address) that ran down the list of existing Federal programs in such areas as transportation, education, housing, economics, and safety, and came to a depressing conclusion: Many of these government efforts do not help, some aggravate, and a few actually have caused the problems they were intended to help solve...

...But he concluded that Federal minimum wage laws have probably led to increased unemployment, and that other Federal labor laws, contributing to high unionization rates in the Northeast and Midwest, have resulted in higher wages that may have slowed growth...

...Few found work, and the traditional nongovernment charitable institutions that had served newcomers so well in previous years—churches, settlement houses, etc.—were overwhelmed...

...Those concrete ribbons, the URPG pointed out, gave rise to suburban sprawl by providing access to cheaper land beyond city limits...

...At the 1977 Congress of Cities held last month in San Francisco, Cabinet members gave delegates of the sponsoring National League of Cities (NLC) some clues to Administration thinking in the light of the research of the last year...

...On the positive side, the Rand study suggested that some of the incentives for decentralization may be declining...

...In Urban Impact of Federal Policies: Economic Development, the influential independent thinktank came to the conclusion that "broad Federal policies have had a greater, though unintended, impact on urban development than deliberate urban programs," and that "these policies have contributed tcthe decline of central-city population and employment...

...This places them in the best position, he argued, to deal with the disproportionate tax burdens between suburbs and cities, the redlining of neighborhoods, and discriminatory zoning practices...

...After sketching this background, the URPG draft recommended to the President that the main thrust of any new urban policy be providing more jobs for the hard-core unemployed...

...The money has been used by local police forces to purchase walkie-talkies, armored cars and other equipment, and was also poured into community-based rehabilitation programs for criminals...

...It further urged greater concentration of existing programs on impoverished neighborhoods, and their suspension or change where they appear to exacerbate problems...

...In the past," he said, "states have literally paved the way for the flow of jobs from our cities by upgrading roads and providing highway interchanges to facilitate suburban shopping malls...

...Whatever the details of the design, though, it is unlikely to win support easily...

...The poll reveals that Americans give churches, local service clubs and Jaycee organizations higher marks than the government in effectively helping their communities...

...The urban headache, meanwhile, was heightened as rural migrants-rendered jobless by the mechanization of agriculture—were attracted to the cities in large numbers...

...they, in turn, affected water supplies...

...But it also observed that people are attracted to comfortable climates and pleasant physical surroundings...

...This is what prompted Brock Adams to ask that NLC delegates help him revamp transportation priorities by letting Congress know what they want and fighting for it...

...Nonetheless, in the past decade the courts have become disastrously overloaded and urban crime statistics have risen sharply...

...The task force includes representatives from several other Cabinet level departments, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, and the White House Domestic Council...

...Partly for this reason, although the fiscal '79 budget the Carter Administration sent to Congress a week ago contains hefty funding for programs traditionally associated with cities, the President is scheduled on March 15 to announce a separate policy and supplemental budget expressly for urban affairs...

...Transportation Secretary Brock Adams spoke of urban ills in terms of the nation's energy problem and the need for better public transit...

...For example, the Federal Highway Administration intends to spend another $26 billion on urban freeways over the next few years just to finish the Interstate System, and legislators whose districts will benefit would be highly reluctant to give up that revenue...

...Dukakis admitted that states are partly to blame for the cities' present straits...

...Massachussetts Governor Michael Dukakis, in his address to the Congress, asked that state governments be included in the formulation of urban policy...

...The President is appalled at the billions of Federal dollars wasted by non- or counter-productive programs, the Domestic Council staff member told me, citing a December Gallup poll suggesting that the American people share his feelings...

...Increased crime in the suburbs and the universality of air polution and traffic congestion have contributed to narrowing the gap as well...

...He found, too, that inner cities have received a disproportionately small share of public works projects that the Economic Development Administration deliberately steps up during recessions...

...Efforts directed toward improving the livability of older cities would therefore seem to offer greater promise of halting their economic decline than simply trying to attract "foot-loose" industries...

...Moreover, as the truck and auto fleet began rolling in earnest over the expanded highway system, the railroads underwent a decline...

...It spent lavishly on welfare, public housing, inner-city school programs, but despite the massive infusions of funds, schools deteriorated, crime rose, and job opportunities remained negligible...

...Where service hasn't already been discontinued, more often than not trains limps into deserted downtown depots that once bustled with commercial and passenger activity...