Time to think big about cities

After World War II, the US launched massive housing and public works programs to keep the nation’s economy from slipping back into a depression. Economically, the programs were a success. Urbanistically, they were a disaster. Thousands of acres of poor but functioning and diverse city neighborhoods were cleared of all historic buildings in order to construct modernist high-rises and barracks-style multifamily units with no connection to the street and surrounding neighborhoods. Highways also were rammed through cities, sweeping away hundreds of neighborhoods and thousands of urban jobs and businesses. Redlining programs increasingly segregated African-Americans, while mortgage guarantees greatly expanded opportunities for homeownership — but only for whites moving out of the cities into the suburbs. Cities have never recovered from the devastation caused by these policies. The nation’s poor were affected the most, at a time when they had few options and limited rights. City building as stimulus We may be entering a time when the government needs to step in once again — not only to ensure national security, but to bolster the world’s largest economy. What better way to stimulate the economy than to rebuild our cities to house the working poor, senior citizens, and disabled in walkable, safe, mixed-use, functional neighborhoods? We know how to make good neighborhoods, and we know how to make them affordable through targeted government intervention. HUD’s Hope VI program replacing public housing with new urbanist projects is a good start, and has been extremely successful in its limited scope. Hope VI should be greatly expanded and used not only for public housing redevelopment, but to build new neighborhoods in other severely blighted and depopulated urban areas. The new housing must be carefully geared to market demand, but also has to include subsidized and entirely public housing. The community design can disguise the mix of incomes, and improve both security and desirability. In addition, private sector housing in both cities and suburbs should be required to include a minimum percentage of affordable housing to ensure that low and moderate wage earners can live in new and rebuilt communities. It is time for the nation to think big again relative to city building, to follow through on a promise long unfulfilled, and to do things right this time. u