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National
White House Hosts First Urban and Metropolitan Policy Roundtable
''For too long, federal policy has actually encouraged sprawl and congestion and pollution, rather than quality public transportation and smart, sustainable development,'' said President Obama as he welcomed ''some of the finest urban thinkers'' at the White House's first Urban and Metropolitan Policy Roundtable, calling the subject ''near and dear'' to his heart, since he lived almost all his life ''in urban areas'' and received his ''greatest education on Chicago's South Side, working at the local level to bring about change in those communities and opportunities to people's lives.''
That experience gave him ''an understanding of some of the challenges facing city halls all across the county,'' challenges ''particularly severe today because of this recession,'' he noted, worried that four in five cities have had to cut services and 48 states face budget deficits.
Absent ''the most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history,'' the President said, ''our cities would be in an even deeper hole, and state budget deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are right now, and tens of thousand of police officers and firefighters and teachers would be out of a job as we speak.''
Still, to rebuild the cities ''on a newer, stronger foundation,'' he continued, the nation needs urban and metropolitan strategies ''that focus on advancing opportunity through competitive, sustainable, and inclusive growth,'' but without the old divide between city and suburb because they now ''come together and recognize they can't solve their problems in isolation,'' while holding 85 percent of the nation's jobs and generating 90 percent of its economic output.
''Now, that doesn't mean investing in America comes at the expense of rural America; quite the opposite,'' the President stressed. ''Investing in mass transit and high-speed rail, for example, doesn't just make our downtowns more livable; it helps our regional economies grow. Investing in renewable energy doesn't just make our cities cleaner; it boosts rural areas that harness that energy. Our urban and rural communities are not independent; they are interdependent.''
To make the White House ''a partner who knows that the old ways of looking at our cities just won't do,'' he said, he has directed the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, and the new Office of Urban Affairs ''to conduct the first comprehensive interagency review in 30 years of how the federal government approaches and funds urban and metropolitan areas so that we can start having a concentrated, focused, strategic approach to federal efforts to revitalize our metropolitan areas.''
Promising to make sure ''federal policies aren't hostile to good ideas or best practices on the local level'' and to invest only in what works, the President exemplified the goal with two of his budgetary proposals -- Promise Neighborhoods, modeled on ''an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck effort that's turning around the lives of New York City's children, block by block,'' and Choice Neighborhoods, which ''focuses on new ideas for housing in our cities by recognizing that different communities need different solutions.''
Turning to the new interagency partnership led by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the President said they will work together to ensure ''that affordable housing exists in close proximity to jobs and transportation,'' which means ''shorter travel times and lower travel costs,'' along with ''safer, greener, more livable communities.''
And complimenting cities that didn't wait for the federal government, and have ''become their own laboratories for change and innovation,'' he mentioned Denver, Philadelphia and Kansas City.
''Three different cities with three unique ideas for the future,'' he said, announcing visits of his Cabinet and Office of Urban Affairs members in all three this summer ''as part of an ongoing national conversation to lift up best practices from around the country, to look at innovations for the metropolitan areas of tomorrow.'' -- Washington Post, The White House 7/13/2009
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