In November 2008, less than one week after winning the votes of city dwellers by a margin of 28 points, President-elect Barack Obama announced he would reward them by creating the first-ever “White House Office of Urban Policy.” Like other new aspects of Obama’s executive branch, appointing a city czar was intended to fast-track communications among city governments, federal agencies and the White House. With great fanfare, Obama dispatched his friend and fellow Chicagoan Valerie Jarrett to tell America that he was making good on his campaign pledge to “stop seeing cities as the problem and start seeing them as the solution.”

When the office was officially formed in mid-February, urbanists rejoiced: “It’s past time,” said Elnora Watson, president of the Urban League in Jersey City, N.J., as she walked the halls of Congress recently. “Way past time,” added Ella Teal, another Urban League president from the neighboring city of Elizabeth. “Cities will lead America,” Newark Mayor Cory Booker said at an April speech on city government in Washington. “When it comes to industry, innovation, education and the arts … cities are where it’s at.”

But celebrations about the potential triumph of urban policy may be premature. In recent weeks, the Obama administration has begun referring to the office as “urban affairs,” rather than “urban policy,” a small but notable downgrade. And while other offices and Cabinet agencies have been staffing up—the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has representation in 12 government agencies—100 days in, urban affairs has announced only two senior staffers: Derek Douglas, who was special adviser to New York Gov. David Paterson, and former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr., who faces allegations of mismanaging campaign donations and development projects in New York City.

As money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act started going out to cash-strapped states and municipalities, Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Pikeville, N.C., this month to specifically address how the stimulus would affect rural America. “As we write a new chapter in our history, the small towns of America … will have to be some of the most prominent of its authors,” he said.

The comparative silence from urban affairs has not gone unnoticed. Diana Lind, editor of Next American City, a journal that covers urban policy, frets that “this isn’t going to be as serious and as powerful a role as many urbanists had hoped.”

That’s not to say nothing has been done. Despite the skeletal staff in urban affairs, the White House has hosted mayors, dispatched five Cabinet secretaries to the National League of Cities conference, and, in March, held a daylong symposium for local administrators to interface with government officials. Biden will attend a Chicago conference on cities this week.

But the urgency of dealing with the recession in these first 100 days has made the slow rollout of the office worrisome for some local officials. Caroline Coleman, federal relations director of the National League of Cities, says cities have been pummeled by the economic downturn. For the first time in the 24-year history of the organization’s City Fiscal Conditions report, the three primary sources of revenue for urban centers—property, sales and income taxes—all experienced a quarterly decrease. “What we’re seeing reflected in the national news is hitting hometown urban America every day,” says Coleman.

Under the Recovery Act, federal funding is flooding state governments—by formula and through competitive grants. A robust and powerful Office of Urban Policy, local leaders say, could handle city-specific conflicts that currently fly under the White House’s radar. For example, said Laurie Kadrich, city manager of Grand Junction, Colo., “In the West, we don’t have those long-term neighborhoods. We need new workforce housing, new apartments, new ways of housing—and some of the dollars are not available for that.”