After weeks of uncertainty and anticipation, the White House Office of Urban Affairs has rolled off the assembly line. The office is designed to facilitate and coordinate programs that improve the lives of city dwellers, from the food served in urban classrooms to the bolts that gird subway lines.

President Barack Obama has finally addressed what had been a prominent pledge during his campaign, to “stop seeing cities as the problem and start seeing them as a solution.” Via a combination of city-centric forward planning in the 2011 federal budget and Recovery Act projects already underway, Obama plans to enact “a vision of vibrant, sustainable places that provide our children with every chance to learn and to grow, and that allow our businesses and workers the best opportunity to innovate and succeed.”

The crowd at the rollout of the office spoke to the multifaceted mandate it has been given. From Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to green jobs adviser Van Jones to drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, the White House gathering underscored the ambition of the Urban Affairs office. “This is a full-court press,” said Adolfo Carrion, the Bronx borough president turned director of the Office of Urban Affairs, speaking for the first time in public about the office. “We need to run on two tracks. We're dealing with a current crisis, and we also have to look at long-term events.”

It’s this tension—between a national mandate and Washington bureaucracy, sweeping ambitions and desperate immediate needs—that defines the office’s unique challenge.

The White House has certainly faced its share of criticisms about the office’s efficacy and the authority of Carrion, who reports to senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Carrion doesn’t have oversight over any of the Cabinet secretaries or agencies that deal with urban affairs, and the office's mandate still does not include either funding or regulatory authority—but it may have something else more valuable: a place at the White House agenda-setting table.

Shaun Donovan, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who has worked closely with Carrion, stressed that Carrion’s White House perch is crucial. “There has to be this kind of work between agencies and the coordination between the White House—otherwise we’re not going to be successful.” Another senior administration official likened Carrion to a conductor: “His job is to make sure he knows who is playing what instrument, and that they are all playing at the same time,” the official said.

Carrion echoed some of Jarrett's reflections on the need for an office of urban policy in the first place. "Local government officials feel like there is a disconnect between the national government and local municipalities," he said. “There is too much noise and too many bottlenecks in the way." Marilyn Katz, a Chicago businesswoman and developer who was among those at the stakeholders meeting before the president's announcement, adds that, "It took us seven years to get [Bill] Clinton to come to the South Bronx to see that cities could change." However delayed, the sudden attention from the first urban president and his largely urban senior staff is very welcome.