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 โWhite House Office of Urban Policy.โ Like other new aspects of Obamaโs 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 โstop seeing cities as the problem and start seeing them as the solution.โ
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When the office was officially formed in mid-February, urbanists rejoiced: โItโs past time,โ said Elnora Watson, president of the Urban League in Jersey City, N.J., as she walked the halls of Congress recently. โWay past time,โ added Ella Teal, another Urban League president from the neighboring city of Elizabeth. โCities will lead America,โ Newark Mayor Cory Booker said at an April speech on city government in Washington. โWhen it comes to industry, innovation, education and the arts โฆ cities are where itโs at.โ
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 โurban affairs,โ rather than โurban policy,โ a small but notable downgrade. And while other offices and Cabinet agencies have been staffing upโthe Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has representation in 12 government agenciesโ100 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. โAs we write a new chapter in our history, the small towns of America โฆ will have to be some of the most prominent of its authors,โ 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 โthis isnโt going to be as serious and as powerful a role as many urbanists had hoped.โ
Thatโs 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 organizationโs City Fiscal Conditions report, the three primary sources of revenue for urban centersโproperty, sales and income taxesโall experienced a quarterly decrease. โWhat weโre seeing reflected in the national news is hitting hometown urban America every day,โ says Coleman.
The Office of Urban Affairs, which reports to Jarrett in Washington and which aims to have interagency representation, was formed to address the urgent, interlocking problems detailed in a recent New York Times report on cities: โan archaic and grotesquely wasteful federal system in which upkeep for roads, subways, housing, public parkland and our water supply are all handled separately.โ
Administration officials say the office will tackle the whole spectrum of concerns relating to โhuman geographyโโfrom the problem of truancy among homeless youth to urban air quality and public health. โWeโre looking at a results-driven and data-driven approach,โ says Douglas, special assistant to the president for urban affairs. โIt doesnโt make sense if youโre doing transportation policy in a separate department from housing policy, because where you do the transit lines, for example, you need to make sure that thereโs housing that has access to the transportation, and when you do the housing you need to make sure itโs affordable housing, so that you donโt have these pockets of concentrated poverty.โ
But while Urban Affairs has grand ambitions, it is operating as part of a complex bureaucracy that makes its real influence hard to observe. Douglas has an appointment in the Domestic Policy Council, but the office itself is not part of the council. Carrion works outside of the policy shop, under Jarrett, but primarily as a liaison to local governments. The officeโs key issues span nearly a dozen agenciesโamong them, Transportation, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Environmental Protection, even Homeland Securityโagencies already hard at work on the problems facing urban America. The faith office is connecting many urban communities of color with resources. The Domestic Policy Councilโs Office of Mobility deals with poverty, and its Office of Opportunity and Social Innovation deals with private-sector investment. Moreover, Obamaโs Cabinet is full of city dwellers with big ideas of their own, from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, to Nancy Sutley, former deputy mayor of Los Angeles and head of the Council on Environmental Quality. So while the mandate of Urban Affairs includes โbreaking down the traditional jurisdictional boundaries,โ according to Douglas, its regulatory authority appears as limited as its challenges are great.
Another part of the problem, some suspect, may be the experience level of Carrion, the director of the office. A former teacher with a record of general success in the Bronxโincluding a commitment to green building in low-income neighborhoodsโCarrion is still essentially a local politician, now tasked with a massive nationwide renovation. While his deputy worked on federal policy for Paterson, this is Carrionโs first foray into national administration. โ[He] doesnโt have a lot of experience in dealing with federal policy,โ says Lind. โHow could you give somebody like Adolfo Carrion control over, say the transportation laws in Milwaukee? Itโs a hard leap to make.โ Despite the campaign funding allegations (the White House declined to comment on the controversy, and requests to interview Carrion for this article were denied), Carrion beat out other, higher-profile officials whose names were floated for the position, including Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin; L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; and Brookings Institution scholar Bruce Katz, who is now working as a senior adviser to HUD. Picking a โcelebrityโ to run the office might have inspired more confidence that it will make a difference to urban America.
At times, the mere existence of Urban Affairs is used as proof of its efficacy. โPeople have tried before to crack the skulls and break the silos,โ says Douglas. โWhatโs different this time is that there is a new office that was created to do thatโฆ. So I think that speaks to the priority.โ
Symbolism alone will not solve all of the pressing issues facing American cities. But many urban interest groups retain high hopes for the new office. โWeโre all waiting and watching,โ says Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, president of Green for All, which promotes green jobs for people of color. โFor issues like retrofitting and weatherization, we need that office to be successful.โ Team Obama is rarely shy about advertising its own successes. And the White House will undoubtedly hype several legislative and diplomatic victories during the 100-day sprint. So itโs worth waiting and watching to see if cities are indeed โthe solutionโโor if substantive, transformational change remains an urban legend.
Dayo Olopade is Washington reporter for The Root.
Covers the White House and Washington for The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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