Obama’s urban initiatives proceeding

Low profile, big impact

Alex Wukman, Jan 14, 11.

Over the course of the 2008 presidential campaign Barrack Obama made bold declarations about the role of cities in America’s future. “We need to promote strong cities as the backbone of regional growth,” said then candidate Obama. He went on to promise that if elected he would redirect the government’s approach to urban policy by creating “a new director of Urban Policy who will cut through the disorganized bureaucracy that currently exists and report directly to me.” As the third year of the Obama presidency begins, City Limits magazine looks back on what the White House has accomplished with its urban agenda.

Despite the creation of a White House Office of Urban Affairs, directed by a former urban planner and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, some urban advocates are not happy with the low profile, behind the scenes approach that has been taken to push a comprehensive planning-based approach to urban development. Harry Moroz, the Drum Major Institute’s senior advisor on federal urban policy, told City Limits that he “thought the office would do more in public to generate momentum behind a broader kind of urban agenda. That hasn’t happened.”

Because some urban advocates were calling for a Marshall Plan for cities, something that urban planners and mayors have been asking for since the Ford Administration, they were unsatisfied with the President’s inclusion of infrastructure improvements in the federal stimulus bill. The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, TIGER, program funded 51 projects for a total of $1.5 billion, including $20 million for Dallas’ downtown streetcar project and another $20 million for the construction of Texas’ State Highway 161 which links Grand Prairie to Irving.

As the White House steps up the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, an umbrella program that coordinates activities among various government agencies, new programs are being rolled out including crime fighting initiatives administered by the Justice Department and increases in funding for health care and mental health support from the Department of Health and Human Services. Among the recipients of DHHS grants are organizations like Houston based Healthcare for the Homeless and Legacy Community Health Services, each of which received grants totaling $1.4 million and $1.1 million respectively.

via Planetizen