REPUBLICANS AND THE END OF FEDERAL ASSISTANCE In the campaigns
of 1980 and 1984, the Republicans virtually wrote off the African
American vote. Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagans campaign strate
gist, advised before the 1980 election that the Reagan for
President 1980 campaign must convert into Reagan votes the
disappointment felt by Southern white and rural voters.39 Reagan
won only 10 percent of the black vote in 1980 and slightly less in
1984. In 1984, however, three out of four southern whites supported
him. The Reagan White House actively worked to undo civil rights
guarantees, slashing the budgets of civil rights enforcement units
and of eight years it largely succeeded. President Reagans agenda
mapped out a radical new departure in federal policy.
Philosophically, Reagan believed that the federal government should
stop helping the cities altogether. Instead, he thought, they, and
the people who lived within them, should help themselves. In a
press conference held in October 1981, President Reagan suggested
the residents of cities where unem ployment was high should vote
with their feet and move to more prosperous areas ofthe country.
His remark ignited an instant political controversy, but, in fact,
it was consistent with the recommendations of a presidential commis
sion appointed by his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. In a report issued
only a few weeks after Reagan took office, the Presidential
Commission on the National Agenda for the Eighties urged that the
national government stop helping cities. The commission emphasized
that federal policies should be used to promote national economic
growth, but these policies should be neutral about where that
growth occurred: It may be in the best interest of the nation to
commit itself to the promotion of locationally neutral economic and
social policies rather than spatially sensitive urban policies that
either explicitly or inadvertently seeks to preserve cities in
their historical roles.42 Recommending that the federal government
let the process of decay in some areas and growth in others take
its natural course, the commission noted that cities adapt and
change in response to economic and social forces. This process of
adaptation, said the commission, should be facilitated, rather than
altered, by governmental policy: Ultimately, the federal
governments concern for national economic vitality should take
precedence over the competition for advantage among communities and
regions.3 To attempt to restrict or reverse the processes of
changefor Whatever noble intentionsis to deny the benefits that the
future may hold for us as a nation.44 The policies subsequently
pursued by the Reagan administration consti tuted a historic turn.
For the first time since urban policy was first enacted in the
1930s, policymakers operated on the assumption that cities were
valuable only if they contributed in a positive way to the national
economy. Three University of Delaware researchers characterized
this new policy direction as a form of Social Darwinism applied to
cities. Cities would survive if they could manage to re generate
their local economies. Otherwise, they would be allowed to wither
away. The Reagan administration began to slash federal urban aid,
proclaim ing the private market is more efficient than federal
program administra tors in allocating dollars. Cities were
instructed to improve their ability to compete in a struggle for
survival in which state and local governments will find it is in
their interests to concentrate on increasing their attractiveness
to potential investors, residents, and visitors.47 The assumption
was that free en terprise would provide a bounty of jobs, incomes,
and neighborhood renewal, and such local prosperity would make
federal programs unnecessary. The CDBG and UDAG programs were
spared deep cuts in the 1983 budget, as was revenue sharing. The
administration had wanted to reduce these pro grams too, but the
White House heard the pleas of governors and mayors, quite a few of
them Republican. Local government representatives came away
relieved the budget cuts were less drastic than they had feared.
Only two years later, however, the administration realized its goal
of eliminating most urban programs. Urban programs gave way to a
new priority: cutting taxes. On February 18, 1981, President Reagan
proposed a massive tax cut to stimulate the economy. The
legislation quickly sailed through Congress, and when Reagan signed
the Economic Recovery Tax Act on August 13, 1981, he proclaimed a
turnaround of almost a half a century of . . . excessive growth in
government bureaucracy, government spending, government taxing.48
In its final version the act reduced individual tax rates by 25
percent over three years and also substantially re duced business
tax liability. The revenue losses were huge. In just the first two
years, $128 billion was lost to the federal treasury, and by 1987
this figure rose to more than $1 trillion.49 In combination with
massive increases in military spending, the 1981 tax cuts created
huge budget deficits. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced federal
revenues even further. Tax rates fell only modestly or not at all
for most taxpayers, but they were cut drastically for the rich. In
subsequent years, a perception that tax burdens fell unfairly on
the middle class helped fuel a tax revolt. George H. W. Bush won
the presidency in 1988 partly with the promise, Read my lips: no
new taxes. Within a few months, the administration slashed spending
for programs for education, housing, health, and welfare. (It
should be pointed out, however, that later in his term President
Bush went along with a bill raising a few taxes in order to reduce
the accumulating federal deficit. By some accounts, this cost him
his bid for a second term.) President Reagan initiated the first
reductions of consequence in grants in-aid expenditures since the
1940s. Broad entitlement programs with middle class recipients,
such as the old-age and survivors benefits funded through the
Social Security Act of 1935, veterans benefits, and Medicare, were
affected only marginally. By contrast, deep cuts and new
eligibility restrictions were imposed on public assistance programs
for the poor. Medicaid, which was available through the states to
welfare recipients, was subjected to tighter eli gibility
requirements, but Medicaid outlays soared anyway because of rising
medical costs. Enrollment in Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC) fell by half a million. A million people lost food
stamps. It became harder to get unemployment benefits; whereas 75
percent of the unemployed received benefits during the recession of
1975, only 45 percent were able to qualify dur ing the 19821983
recession.50 first term, including revenue sharing and federally
assisted local public works. The UDAGs were eliminated in 1986,
although a trickle of money contin ued to flow in the
administrative pipeline for several years (the total spend ing fell
from an annual level of between $400 and $500 million for the first
10 years of the program [fiscal years 1978 to 1987] to $200 million
in fiscal 1988 and dried up to a nominal $3 million by fiscal
1994).51 Other budget cuts also affected the cities. Most subsidies
for the construction of public housing were eliminated. Only 10,000
new units a year were authorized af ter 1983, compared with the
111,600 new or rehabilitated units authorized for 1981.52 Despite
his opposition to urban programs of almost any kind, President
Reagan moved to put his stamp on the Republican approach to the
cities by pushing legislation meant to stimulate investment in
troubled inner-city neigh borhoods. On March 7, 1983, Reagan sent
the proposed Urban Enterprise Zone Act to Congress, claiming the
legislation represented a sharp break from past policy: Enterprise
zones are a fresh approach for promoting economic growth in the
inner cities. The old approach relied on heavy government subsidies
and central planning. A prime example was the model cities program
in the 19605, which concentrated government programs, subsidies and
regulations in distressed urban areas. The enterprise zone approach
is to remove government barriers, bring individuals to create,
produce and earn their own wages and profits.53 No matter what
claims the president made, the legislation was not a fresh approach
but a logical extension of past policies. Since the latter years of
the Carter administration, federal policy had stressed the role of
government in subsidizing private investment. Throughout the Reagan
years, the enterprise zones idea surfaced from time to time, but
the administration never gave it pri ority. After George H. W.
Bushs election to the presidency in 1988, the idea continued to
receive an occasional nudge from the president or from HUD, but
urban policy of any kind did not surface as a meaningful item on
the presi dents legislative agenda until very late in his term. The
administration of George H. W. Bush was not motivated by its elec
toral base or its ideology to propose urban legislation. In the
1988 presidential election, Bush used racial issues to mobilize his
base. Republicans ran an at tack ad that featured a police
photograph of Willie Horton, who had raped a woman in Maryland and
stabbed her fianc while on a weekend pass from a Massachusetts
prison. The Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, had been the
governor of Massachusetts at the time. According to Bushs campaign
di rector, Lee Atwater, the fact that Willie Horton was black was
the key element explaining the ads emotional impact. In the 1992
election, the Bush campaign refined its racial appeals by re
sorting to a code language that used attacks on cities as a
signifier of race and welfare-state liberalism. In one of the
opening salvos of the campaign, Vice President Dan Quayle attacked
New York City by saying, The liberal vi sion of a happy, productive
and content welfare state hasnt even worked on 22 square miles of
the most valuable real estate in the world.54 A later Quayle attack
prompted a New York Post headline: City to Dan Quayle: DONT DIS
US!55 An editorial in the New York Times called Quayles attacks an
at tempt to make New York City The Willie Horton of 1992.56 Despite
the administrations rhetoric, late in his term President Bush made
some gestures, mostly symbolic, in the direction of urban policy.
The pressure to do so came on April 29May 3, 1992, when serious
rioting broke out in Los Angeles. Measured by the number of deaths
(53), injuries (2,383), property damage (over $700 million), and
the response required to reestablish order, the Los Angeles riot
was the countrys worst episode of civil disorder in the twentieth
century. Many people thought the riot could be used as an oppor
tunity to call attention to the problems of urban America. Two
weeks after the riots, 150,000 people descended on Washington for a
Save Our Cities/Save Our Children rally. As the atmosphere ofcrisis
faded, however, urban issues got lost in election-year politics.
Democratic candidate Bill Clinton initially blamed the riots on
twelve years of denial and neglect by Presidents Bush and Reagan,
but fearing he might be accused of advocating new spending
programs, Clinton soon muted his criticisms.58 On Monday, May 5,
Bushs press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, said the Great Societys
programs ofthe 1960s were to blame for the rioting. Nevertheless,
in an attempt to look like he was responding positively, President
Bush proposed an emergency aid package. In June Congress passed
$1.3 billion in emergency aid that allocated $500 million for
summer jobs, $382 million for loans to businesses damaged or
destroyed in the riot areas, and some flood relief for the city of
Chicago. Through the summer and early fall of 1992, Congress worked
on a larger urban aid bill. A version was finally approved by the
House on October 6 and the Senate on October 8. The legislation
would have created 25 urban and 25 rural enterprise zones and
financed so-called weed and seed programs that combined enhanced
law enforcement with job training and education programs. The bulk
of the legislation, however, was made up of a long list of items
that had nothing to do with cities, including liberalized
(tax-free) retirement accounts for upper-income people and a
provision for the repeal of luxury taxes on yachts, furs, jewels,
and planes (Democrats backed this amendment as enthusiastically as
Republicans). It was estimated that of the $30 billion the bill
would cost over five years, about $6 billion would be used to help
depressed areas in cities.59 By the time the legislation was passed
and sent to the White House for President Bushs signature, the
election was over. Bush vetoed it, claiming it was contaminated by
pork-barrel amendments. The CDBG program was the only major urban
program to survive the Reagan/Bush years. CDBG spending fell from
$4 billion in the 1981 fiscal year to $2.8 billion in fiscal 1990
before rebounding slightly in fiscal 1992, the year the Democrats
reclaimed the White House. Under President Clinton, CDBG spending
rose modestly to $4.6 billion by the 1996 fiscal year,60 and to
$5.1 billion by Clintons last budget, the 2001 fiscal year (when
adjusted for inflation, however, funding for the program actually
stayed even). Under President George W. Bush, the level of funding
fell, but the program was not eliminated entirely.61
POLITICAL REALITY AND URBAN POLICY As a self-styled new Democrat
who wanted to project an image as a friend of the forgotten middle
class, Bill Clinton could not be expected to place aid to cities or
to the poor on the front burner. In the 1992 presidential election
the Clinton campaign decided to concentrate on appealing to the
white suburban middle class and to assume that inner-city voters
would support him anyway because they had no place else to go.
Clintons electoral strategy succeeded in making him the first
Democrat to be elected to two full terms since Franklin D.
Roosevelt. Clinton succeeded by winning back many of the white
suburban vot ers who had deserted the party in 1980. Even so, he
still lost the overall white vote by a 39 to 41 percent margin. He
carried huge pluralities in the cities, com ing out of New York
City, for example, with almost a million-vote lead. His abil ity to
capture 82 percent of the African American vote was crucial to his
victory. The logic behind Clintons suburban strategy was
compelling. By the 1990 census, 48 percent of the nations
population lived in suburbs. Because they tended to turn out for
elections at a relatively high rate, it seemed certain they would
cast a majority of the national vote in the 1992 election.62 In
addition, large proportions of suburban voters were so-called
Reagan Democrats, blue collar and middle-class voters who had
abandoned the party to vote Republican in the three previous
presidential elections. They were heavily concentrated in the older
suburbs in key states such as New Jersey, Michigan, and California,
which could deliver the big blocs of Electoral College votes
coveted by every presidential candidate. To bring them back to the
fold, Clinton wanted to avoid identifying himself with policies
that were targeted to cities, and especially to blacks. In
developing his strategy, Clinton followed the advice of a
well-known African American sociologist, William Julius Wilson,
whose 1987 book, The Truly Disadvantaged, warned against
race-specific policies. Wilson, who was a friend and adviser ofthe
president, recommended a hidden agenda in which inner-city
minorities might be helped by emphasizing programs to which the
more advantaged groups of all races and classes can positively
relate.63 In an interview before the election, Wilson praised
Clintons programs for targeting all low- to moderate-income groups,
not just minorities.64 Clinton ended up developing what two
scholars called a stealth urban policy composed of programs that
were not specifically targeted to cities but would help them. In
their campaign book, Putting People First, Bill Clinton and Al Gore
advocated cross-cutting policies designed to help both the middle
class and the disadvantaged. Clintons highly successful campaign
bus tours avoided the inner cities and provided the media with
ample opportunities to photograph the candidate against small town
and rural backdrops. After winning the nomination, Clinton did
attend a meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM)
and lent his support to a public works ini tiative. Clinton
stressed, however, that the primary goal was to stimulate the
economy and that aiding cities would be a secondary effect. Clinton
began his presidency with the intention of rewarding the cit ies
that had voted lopsidedly for him. To accomplish this, he put
together a $19.5 billion economic stimulus bill that included $4.4
billion for public works (mostly in cities), $2.5 billion for
community development grants, and $735 million for inner-city
schools and jobs. Led by minority leader Bob Dole (R.-Kans.),
Senate Republicans filibustered the bill, refusing to let it come
up for a vote. Lacking the 60 votes necessary to end the
filibuster, the Democrats were forced to back down. Eventually, all
that was passed was a bill not tar geted at the cities at all, a $4
billion extension of unemployment benefits for the chronically
unemployed.66 The only significant new urban initiative that the
Clinton administra tion could claim was the Empowerment
Zones/Enterprise Communities (EZ/EC) program, which was included as
Title XIII of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993.
Republicans and even many conservatives had sup ported the
enterprise zones idea in the Reagan and Bush years because it was
based on a strategy of cutting taxes and regulations in inner
cities, with the intention of stimulating investment in depressed
neighborhoods. Conservatives liked it because it mirrored the
Republicans national-level policies. The Clinton administration
adopted this same free-market approach. To promote investment in
EZ/EC zones, tax credits were provided for employers who hired
workers who lived in the zone, and businesses located within the
zones became eligible for accelerated depreciation on business
property and tax-exempt bond financing for new construction. Grant
money was also made available to assist zone residents in obtaining
education, job training, and child care so that they could work.
Ultimately, 31 Empowerment Zones were created across the coun try,
and 74 additional distressed areas (33 in rural areas) also won
grants, but these were small in comparison to the full-fledged
Empowerment Zones. Empowerment Zones proved to be the only
politically viable urban pro gram left. The midterm 1994 elections
dealt a deathblow to urban and so cial welfare policies. Led by
House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America (labeled
Contract on America by detractors), the Republicans won control of
both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. The
Republicans were hostile to the little that remained of federal
urban programs. Speaker Gingrich called for the elimination of the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, asserting, You could
abolish HUD tomorrow morning and improve life in most of America.
He was blunt about why HUD was being singled out for especially
harsh treatment: Its weak constituency, he said, makes it a prime
candidate for cuts.67 In a desperate attempt to stave off disaster,
HUD secretary Henry Cisneros proposed to reinvent his department in
ways pleasing to conservatives. Announced a month and a half after
the 1994 election, HUD issued a Reinvention Blueprint calling for a
consolidation ofthe departments programs into three flexible block
grants that would be administered by cities and states. The plan
also proposed converting all public housing aid to vouchers, which
would allow recipients to find housing wherever private landlords
would take them. Reinventing HUD became the centerpiece of Clintons
National Urban Policy Report, issued in July 1995.68 The decline in
public housing and urban programs began well before Clinton came
into office, but the fact that a Democrat was now in the White
House did not change things very much. In the Reagan and Bush
years, HUD experienced the largest cuts of any cabinet-level
department in the federal government. HUD budget authority (what
Congress authorizes it to spend) fell from 7.5 percent of the total
federal budget in 1978 to 1.3 percent by 1990. During the Clinton
administration, annual HUD spending recovered slightly, but this
only enabled HUD to meet past commitments for housing subsidies.
Four programs of special interest to city governments, General
Revenue Sharing, Urban Development Action Grants, Local Public
Works, and Antirecession Fiscal Assistance, were zeroed
outeliminated entirely. The welfare reform Bill Clinton signed in
August 1996 also hurt the cit ies. The Personal Responsibility Act
of 1996 converted Aid to Families with Dependent Children into a
block grant run by the states. In addition to a 64 percent decline
in welfare spending from 1990 to 1998, food stamps and community
services programs were sharply reduced. Three programschild
nutrition, supplemental (infant) feeding, and housing
assistanceincreased somewhat only because they were linked to
welfare reform efforts. Medicaid costs climbed substantially (by
146 percent), but the big winner was justice assistance, which
skyrocketed 1,250 percent in less than a decade. Although some of
this money went to cities, the states used most of it to build
prisons. Obviously, crime control trumped any other social
purpose.
THE CITIES FALL FROM GRACE Until the election of Barack Obama to
the presidency in November 2008, both political parties had largely
abandoned the cities. It was a matter of making a political
calculus. In the case of the Republicans, party leaders had long
sought to capitalize on white suburbanites disaffection from the
Democratic-sponsored civil rights and antipoverty policies ofthe
1960s. What is more interesting is the way the past friend of the
cities, the Democratic Party, shied away from urban issues. In 1968
the Democrats used the word city 23 times in the party platform
adopted at their presidential nominating convention. It did not
appear even once in the 1988 platform. The substitute term,
hometown America, signaled recognition of the political importance
of the suburbs. In 1992 and 1996, Clinton avoided policies targeted
to cities and concentrated his appeals on the suburban middle
class. Notably, in the 2000 campaign, Democratic candidate Al Gore
mentioned urban sprawl as a significant national issue. By the new
century, urban policy no longer referred to central cities but to
urban regions. The near-invisibility of cities in national politics
can be explained by a simple fact: today, central-city voters are a
very small fraction of the national electorate. The central cities
ofthe 32 largest metropolitan areas reached a high water mark of 27
percent ofthe electorate in 1944, but by 1992 they accounted for
just 14 percent of the national vote69 and 12 percent by the 2000
election. As shown in Figure 8.2, the share of their states votes
cast by their largest cit ies has fallen steadily for half a
century in New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and
Massachusetts.70 In 1952, New York City voters represented 48
percent of the statewide electorate, but by the 2000 presidential
election their proportion ofthe statewide vote had fallen to 32
percent. Chicago claimed 41 percent ofthe Illinois presidential
vote in 1952 but only 20 percent by 2000. 48% 40 New York Percent
of Statewide Total Vote on O | 29% 21% 20 \_\ 20% Philadelphia 14%
10 Detroit | | | | | | | | | | | 655%| 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968
1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 FIGURE 8.2 City Proportion
of Actual State Electorate, 19522000. Sources: Richard Scammon,
America Votes (various issues); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census
of Population and Housing, various years; and reports of actual
city votes from county boards of elections (and newspapers for 1996
election). Data compiled by Richard Sauerzopf. Data from 2000 from
Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf, and Todd Swanstrom, Place Matters,
2nd ed. (Lawrence: University Press Representatives. Between 1963
and 1994, the number of congressional districts with a major ity of
the population coming from central cities fell from 94 to 84, and
over the same period the number of districts with a majority of
suburban voters increased from 94 to 214. In 1994, after the
Republicans took control of the House, the proportion of leadership
positions held by representatives from districts with a sizable
proportion of central-city voters fell precipitously, from 30 to 10
percent.71 Similar trends reduced the influence ofthe big cities in
state governments as well.72 The number of states with suburban
electoral majori ties climbed from 3 in 1980 to 14 in 1990, and
increased again when seats were reapportioned as a result of the
2000 census. It is generally assumed the suburbs now hold the key
to winning national elections. Suburban votes were critical to the
presidential victories of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W.
Bush; Reagan won huge landslides in 1980 and 1984 even though he
only carried about a third of the central-city vote. In the 1988
election, suburban voters gave Bush such a comfortable cushion that
he could have carried almost all of the northern industrial states
without a single vote from the big cities in those states. By
contrast, the central-city electorate was an important part of Bill
Clintons winning coalition in 1992 and 1996. In 1992 New York City
provided Clinton with 92 percent of his nearly 1-million statewide
vote margin, and Clinton lost to Bush in suburban Long Island
(Nassau and Suffolk counties). In 1996 Clinton did even better in
the cities, winning 67 percent of the vote in Milwaukee, 74 percent
in Boston, 76 percent in St. Louis and New York, and 80 percent in
Chicago.73 In the 2000 presidential election Al Gore won similar
pluralities in the cities, but it was not enough to overcome George
W. Bushs near-sweep of southern and less urban, less populated
states of the Plains and the West. Gore won the national popular
vote by more than 500,000 votes, but Bush was able to win the
election by commanding a bare majority of votes in the Electoral
College. Even though President Clinton owed a debt to big-city
voters for his two election victories, he did not make urban issues
a priority. During his presi dency, federal spending for the cities
continued to fall. Clearly, Clinton felt he could take his urban
base for granted, and he was right. This strategy did im pose a
potential cost on the Democrats, however, because as the federal
gov ernment turned away from the cities, voter turnout in them went
into a steep slide. Indeed, in the past half century, 40 percent of
the loss in the proportion of votes cast in the 32 largest cities
can be traced to falling turnout and not to shrinking
population.74
THE END OF URBAN POLICY At first blush it would appear that
Barack Obamas election put the voters of central cities and their
constituency groups into a more favorable position than they had
enjoyed for decades. For the first time since the Carter adminis
tration, the president signaled that he might pay attention to
urban problems. Only a few weeks after taking office, the Obama
administration announced the appointment of Adolfo Carrion, the
president of Borough of the Bronx, as its urban czar, with the
charge to coordinate the urban-related programs then on the books.
That goal has not been realized. It would be a daunting job merely
to identify the programs that influence cities and urban regions.
An even harder task would follow. These programs are located in
dozens of agen cies operating under almost all of the cabinet-level
departments. Even with a lot of attention and political muscle from
the White House, it is not clear what coordination would amount to.
Probably for this reason, as time passed lit tle was heard from the
urban czar, and there was no prospect that urban issues would be
able to compete in a crowded political agenda any time soon. Still,
it should be noted that more than at any time in decades, programs
ini tiated by the Obama administration will significantly influence
metropolitan de velopment and the fiscal condition of states and
cities. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which
authorized the expenditure of $787 billion over a 10-year period,
are critically important to states and localities. The act
allocated $79 billion to provide fiscal assistance to states, an
important initiative because the states were imposing deep budget
cuts that threatened to make the post 2007 recession worse. In
addition, the legislation authorized $144 billion for
infrastructure projects, which included $32 billion for
transportation projects, $10 billion for rail and mass transit, and
$2 billion for airports. School dis tricts were slated to receive
$41 billion in grants for construction projects and other
activities. The legislation set aside money for a wide array of
activities to promote clean energy and conservation. Among other
initiatives, the adminis tration also announced a $1 billion
program to put 5,500 more police officers on the streets.76
Organizations representing urban interests, broadly defined, were
invig orated by these programs. On March 1418, 2009, the National
League of Cities convened its Annual Congressional City Conference,
a gathering of local officials from across the country. By contrast
to previous years, the conference revolved around a wide-ranging
agenda featuring discussions of new federal initiatives in many
areas, including infrastructure investment, jobs programs, green
energy, and transportation. Local officials needed to share
information because they found themselves involved in administering
a broader variety of new federal programs than they had since the
1960s. However, all of these programs taken together do not add up
to an urban policy, or even a collection of policies with similar
aims. Even in the heyday of urban and social welfare programs, when
federal administrators of the Great Society showered the cities
with money, a coherent urban policy never ex isted. Programs were
created for different reasons and for different purposes, and to
satisfy a variety of political needs and influential
constituencies. There are still a large number of programs that
influence cities, suburbs, and the people that live within them,
but hardly any of these actually have urban aims. The stimulus
package illustrates this fact perfectly: although local gov
ernments would be deeply affected, the main policy objective was to
stimulate the national economy. Simply put, for a long time urban
has not been a category that the federal government cares very much
about.
