To the Reader

Topic Guide

Selected World Wide Web Sites

UNIT 1 The Urban Frame Three articles review some of the dynamics of urban living that need to be stressed if cities are to regain their appeal.

Overview

1. Fear of the City, 1783 to 1983 Alfred Kazin examines the age-old threats of the city from a personal and historical perspective. He argues that despite its excesses and aggressiveness, the city possesses an indescribable allure and magic.

Alfred Kazin, American Heritage, February/March 1983.

2. The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City Thirty years of social programs have done little to invigorate innercity neighborhoods. What's needed, Michael Porter argues, is an entirely new approach that stresses the economic potential of the inner city. He sees an opportunity to take advantage of the ghetto's proximity to downtown business. This makes the ghetto the ideal location for just-in-time niche manufacturing and business services. Porter profiles successful inner-city businesses.

Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, May/June 1995.

3. Back to the Renaissance? A New Perspective on American Cities This "back to the future" article notes that great cities have always served as centers of trade and commerce, as well as of cultural creativity. The industrial cities of the nineteenth and twentieth century are more exceptions than exemplars of historic urban functions. The future for successful cities, he argues, will look much like the past.

Joel Kotkin, Pepperdine University Institute for Public Policy and the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, September 1997.

UNIT 2 The Shape of the Urban Landscape Three selections explore some of the factors that define the urban scene.

Overview

4. Home from Nowhere James Kunstler's call for a "new urbanism" criticizes the zoning and highway construction policies that have produced "sprawl." He proposes to reverse the deconcentration of population through the creation of mixed-use neighborhoods where people of different incomes can live, shop, and sometimes work.

James Howard Kunstler, The Atlantic Monthly, September 1996.

5. In Praise of Highways Contrary to the critics of "sprawl," Barnes argues that we need more, not fewer, highways since the construction of new roads has lagged far behind population growth. He questions the efficiency and appeal of mass transit and says that the automobile should and will remain the primary means of urban transportation.

Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard, April 27, 1998.

6. Shrinking Cities By 1990, for the first time in American history, more people were living in small cities (100,000-500,000) than large ones (over 500,000). Today a small city with an airport and access to an interstate highway can be as good a place from which to conduct business as the downtown of a large city.

Witold Rybczynski

Peter Linneman, Wharton Real Estate Review, Fall 1997.

UNIT 3 Urban Economies Five selections discuss some of the forces that drive the economies of urban centers.

Overview

7. City Lights Beckon to Business Demographic analysis shows that cities are underserved consumer markets. Some major national retailers, such as Sears, Roebuck, Radio Shack, and Rite Aid have already begun to tap into this potential. They find that in some cases inner city stores outperform their suburban counterparts.

Christy Fisher, American Demographics, October 1997.

8. When UPS Demanded Workers Louisville Did the Delivering, This behind-the-scenes look at negotiations between UPS and the city of Louisville shows that even a robust economy doesn't necessarily protect a city from the demands of a powerful local employer. In addition to the standard package of economic incentives, creative solutions like introduction of a special nightshift college kept UPS in Louisville.

Greg Jaffe

Douglas A. Blackmon, Wall Street Journal, April 24, 1998.

9. Gotham's Workforce Woes New York City employers complain about their entry-level workforce. Hostile attitudes (an "entitlement mentality"), persistent absenteeism, tardiness, and poor language skills top the familiar list of problems that, not surprisingly, plague our schools as well as our workplaces.

Heather Mac Donald, City Journal, Summer 1997.

10. Bay Area Aims to Be a Contender In the nineteenth century, New York's role in innovations like radio and the wire services helped make that city the communications capital of the country. Today, new developments in digitalized communications are putting Silicon Valley, which has an intense concentration of multimedia firms, into competition with New York.

Michael Clough, Los Angeles Times, May 10, 1998.

11. New Immigrants Discover How to Create Own Jobs The decline of manufacturing has pushed many New York immigrants into opening small businesses. Immigrants have established themselves in both traditional niches such as grocery stores and laundries as well as in construction, travel, and franchising.

Lisa Goff, Crain's New York Business, November 25, 1996.

UNIT 4 Urban Revival Four articles look at how cities are being resurrected and rejuvenated.

Overview

12. America's Cities: They Can Yet Be Resurrected The Economist, January 10, 1998. "Cautious optimism" informs this analysis of America's urban revival. Despite deep economic and political divisions between affluent suburbs and "benighted" inner cities, declining crime and unemployment rates and a group of innovative mayors promise to restore a measure of urban vitality.

13. Rejuvenation of Cities: Was It Just Cosmetics? Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell, among the most-touted "new mayors," questions the depth of urban rejuvenation by pointing to the chasm between downtown prosperity and inner-city poverty. Rendell sees New York's current prosperity as an anomaly born of the Wall Street boom. He argues that cities like Philadelphia, facing population and political decline, require a restoration of federal aid.

Blaine Harden, Washington Post, March 15, 1998.

14. Cities Are Fostering the Arts as a Way to Save Downtown New "boom towns" like San Jose in Silicon Valley and old industrial cities like Newark are looking to the arts to restore their downtowns. As the National Endowment for the Arts cuts funding, municipalities are filling the void, building massive arts and entertainment complexes to lure audiences and energy back into the city.

Bruce Weber, New York Times, November 18, 1997.

15. Cities That Work Six different cities -- including Vancouver, Minneapolis, Chattanooga, and Melbourne, Australia -- create innovative solutions to their most pressing problems, from Chattanooga's industrial pollution to Buritiba, Brazil's suffocating street traffic.

Brendan I. Koerner, U.S. News & World Report, June 8, 1998.

UNIT 5 Urban Policies and Politics Five selections review how policies and politics have affected urban centers.

Overview

16. Why Liberalism Fled the City ... And How It Might Come Back The rise of black nationalism and the decline of the labor movement, says Harold Meyerson, spelled disaster for municipal liberalism by the 1980s. But persistent poverty, widening gaps between the rich and the poor, and unprecedented immigration all create new possibilities for a revival of both liberalism and the labor movement.

Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect, March/April 1998.

17. Broken Cities: Liberalism's Urban Legacy Urban decline over the last 30 years, Hayward argues, can be traced to liberals and liberalism. He points not only to housing policies that undermined upward mobility but to the inability of liberals to come to grips with the destructive effects of crime and rioting.

Steven Hayward, Policy Review, March/April 1998.

18. The Quest for Common Ground Inner cities and close-in older suburbs are forming political and service-delivery alliances. They hope to share costs as well as to contain the continuing movement of people and jobs to the outer ring of America's metropolitan areas.

Rob Gurwitt, Governing, June 1998.

19. Empowerment in the Public Sector In Indianapolis, public employees have risen to the challenge of competition posed by Indianapolis mayor Steve Goldsmith. Unionized transportation, sanitation, and printing workers have won competitive bids to perform services at savings to the city of around $20 million -- without layoffs and with "gainsharing" pay and benefit increases.

David Osborne

Peter Plastrik, The New Democrat, March/April 1998.

20. What the Biggest Cities Can Learn from the Upstarts Multinational companies increasingly locate their corporate headquarters and top officers in locales where they have few deep ties or loyalties. Smaller cities have the advantage of elites that are more likely to be committed to the fate of the city as well as their companies.

Joel Kotkin, New York Times, April 26, 1998.

UNIT 6 Urban Neighborhoods Six selections look at the revival of urban neighborhoods.

Overview

21. Welcome Neighbors? Racially mixed neighborhoods are more common and more stable than is often assumed. Research into the dynamics of neighborhood and racial residence patterns indicates that it's not racism per se that drives choices so much as a sense that heavily minority areas threaten on owner's property value.

Ingrid Gould Ellen, The Brookings Review, Winter 1997.

22. Division Street, Eyal Press, Lingua Franca, March 1998. Prominent sociologists debate both the extent and meaning of spatial segregation in contemporary America. Orlando Patterson emphasizes the voluntary nature of much residential segregation , as well as the significance of increasing interracial interaction in schools and the workplace. By contrast, Douglas Massey highlights various discriminatory practices in the housing market.

23. Three Good Community-Building Ideas from Abroad The author points to innovative examples of neighborhood-level empowerment that invigorates "civil society." These include "traffic calming" to encourage pedestrian activity and rezoning that allows for the redesign of existing space into "accessory apartments."

George W. Liebmann, The American Enterprise, November/December 1996.

24. Left Behind in Sandtown A great deal of hope has been placed in Baltimore's Sandtown, a poor neighborhood that has been the site of organizing efforts by the Industrial Areas Foundation and a heavy federal commitment of Empowerment Zone dollars. But despite the concentration of effort that has produced new housing, Sandtown still lacks the grassroots coalitions needed to sustain the community's revival.

Barry Yeoman, City Limits, January 1998.

25. The Mansion Subsidy The mortgage interest deduction, an 84-year-old federal program designed to encourage home ownership, has at times become "welfare for the wealthy." Far more high-earning than middle or working-class people use the deduction. The authors suggest ways to make the policy more equitable.

Peter Dreier

John Atlas, The New Democrat, January/February 1997.

26. Public Housing in Atlanta Is Lesson for Philadelphia: A Makeover Lures People of All Incomes Atlanta's Centennial Place represents a new departure for "public" housing. It had become a "reservation" for the African American poor. Now rebuilt with private and public money, it houses tenants who are mixed in terms of both income and race. It also includes a new magnet school and community center.

Peter Nicholas, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 4, 1998.

UNIT 7 Urban Problems: Education, Crime, and Welfare Seven articles examine the inherent problems of urban growth.

Overview

A. EDUCATION

27. Loco, Completamente Loco Bilingual education, it is argued, is neither; it is an academically ineffective program carried out almost entirely in Spanish. The longer students remain in bilingual education programs, the further they fall behind. Hispanic parents in cities across the country, including Brooklyn, Denver, and Los Angeles, are challenging the assumptions and practices of bilingual education.

Glenn Garvin, Reason, January 1998.

28. Schools for Sale Charter schools are emerging as one of the most popular and significant responses to the widespread failure of urban schools. Parents of varying political orientations are joining together in numerous cities, including Cleveland, Denver, Milwaukee, Newark, and Jersey City, to push for, and support, charter schools.

Michael Winerip, New York Times Magazine, June 14, 1998.

B. CRIME

29. Broken Windows This is the seminal article on policing that created the conceptual underpinnings for New York's dramatic decline in crime. The authors challenged the 911 theory of policing that emphasized a rapid response to crime in favor of favor of order maintenance.

James Q. Wilson

George L. Kelling, The Atlantic Monthly, March 1982.

30. Unbroken Windows Tucker attributes the drop in crime to changes in thinking about crime. This overview of theories about crime and criminal justice begins with "labeling theory," the first of many efforts to "deconstruct" criminal behavior -- and then considers the "exclusionary rule," before arriving at the success of "broken windows."

William Tucker, New York Press, July 30-August 5, 1997.

31. Mandate for Anarchy Detroit's approach to law enforcement under Mayor Coleman Young fanned racial resentments toward the police, declaring them (the police) to be "the major threat ... to the minority community." Detroit's crime levels soared far beyond that of most other cities; this article recreates the rhetoric and events that helped send Detroit onto a long downhill spiral after the 1967 riots.

Tamar Jacoby, The New Democrat, May/June 1998.

C. WELFARE REFORM

32. The State of Welfare Caseloads in America's Cities This research study examines the decline of welfare in 23 major cities in relation to the states in which they're located. Since 1986, about half of the urban caseloads declined faster than their respective states, and about half declined more slowly.

Bruce Katz

Kate Carnevale, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy (The Brookings Institution), May 1998.

33. Some Private Efforts See Success in Job Hunt for Those on Welfare Successful efforts to move welfare recipients into the work force are popping up around the country. Most require specific knowledge of the local economy, including what kinds of entry-level workers employers are looking for, as well as linkages to the employers. In addition, successful programs need specific knowledge about the kinds of supports the job seekers need.

Alan Finder, New York Times, June 16, 1998.

UNIT 8 Urban Futures Four articles examine the implications of a rapidly rising urban population.

Overview

34. Futureville, The Economist, February 3, 1996. San Diego is being touted as the city of the future. It has recovered from massive defense cuts through the growth of local, high-tech companies that have spun off military technologies for civilian use. Biotechnology and telecommunications are thriving in this business-friendly city, lauded for its low taxes and efficient city services.

35. Venture Kapital The future of Berlin, a city whose development was frozen for half a century by the cold war, provides a unique opportunity to reconceptualize the urban form. Since the Wall fell in 1989, Berlin has been struggling to reinvent itself in ways that both reflect its past and anticipate the city's future either as a government center, a "gateway to the east," or a magnet for tourists and knowledge workers.

Gary Wolf, Wired, June 1998.

36. Back from the Brink After 30 years of failed policy initiatives, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., are reconstructing their historic role as centers of economic opportunity, social mobility, and immigrant incorporation. Even high-tech communications can't replace the intensity and face-to-face contact that great cities offer.

Fred Siegel, The New Democrat, September/October 1997.

37. Downtown: The Live-In Solution Downtowns from Philadelphia to Tulsa are finally attracting residents as well as businesses. Older buildings offer architecturally interesting spaces that cost less to rehabilitate as residences than as high-tech offices. Local government policies (such as zoning, tax incentives, and so forth) often support downtown residential development that attracts a variety of childless professionals.

Ellen Perlman, Governing, June 1998.

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