Out beyond the central business district, in the endless miles of built-up neighborhoods that some of us call the “grey areas,” the rot goes on unchecked.
As Vernon described it, the rot included hundreds of square miles of space filled with “worn-out housing and outmoded factories which promise to be more and more neglected and underused in the decades ahead.” Given the magnitude of the problem, the forces of private markets would not be able to stem the rot, Vernon said. Nor would cities themselves, in light of tax bases that were already shrinking. “Some of these city areas, built at high densities for a horse-trolley era, should probably be redesigned for fewer people and more open space. But in how many cities could officials initiate and finance such a move?” The window of opportunity for a reversal was already narrow, and he urged the federal government to do something proactive, to help shape the future destiny of its cities before it was too late and a two-tiered America set in for good.
Richardson Dilworth, the mayor of Philadelphia in 1959, testifying before the same subcommittee on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, advocated federal assistance, not in the familiar terms of urban aid and entitlement programs, but in something far more lasting and socially meaningful. He argued for the establishment of a single government for each of the nation’s metropolitan areas, in which a chief executive would have true jurisdiction not only over the city but also over the suburbs ringing it. Such a form of government, Dilworth felt, would unite the city and its suburbs instead of dividing them along social and racial lines. “We cannot continue to set up one class against another,” he said. “That is being done today with the cities against the suburbs. We have to work out some program for the proper allocation of our industry, and … every mayor of a big city would feel that actually there should be one government—one local government—for every great metropolitan area and that this hodgepodge of governments creates conflicts, creates an enormous manner of additional problems, and leads to the inefficient, terrible tax burdens and makes it difficult to have any proper development in the area to meet the problems of democracy.”
The words of Vernon and Dilworth were prescient and bold. As it turned out, the men were not exaggerating at all. But given the federal attitude that had existed about cities at least as far back as the 1930s, their words were doomed to collect dust on some urban-studies shelf.
With the exception of the popular mythology of small-town girl and small-town boy making it big in the starry glitter of New York, cities had always held a place in American culture that was tenuous at best and reviled at worst. “Enthusiasm for the American city has not been typical or predominant in our intellectual history. Fear has been the more common reaction,” wrote Morton and Lucia White in The Intellectual Versus the City. “We have no persistent or pervasive tradition of romantic attachment to the city in our literature or in our philosophy, nothing like the Greek attachment to the polis or the French writer’s affection for Paris.” In examining the writings of Jefferson, Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Poe, the Whites found what they called an “anti-urban roar,” particularly since American cities, unlike the great capitals of Europe, were first and foremost belching creatures of commerce.
“The city is doomed,” said Henry Ford, advancing the antiurban rhetoric. “We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city.”
Lewis Mumford, America’s great urban and social critic, in his 1938 book, The Culture of Cities, described big cities as on the verge of becoming “cemeteries for the dead,” built up without any human dimension and only to keep pace with population expansion and industrialization. “Forms of social life that the wisest no longer understood, the more ignorant were prepared to build. Or rather: the ignorant were completely unprepared, but that did not prevent the building,” wrote Mumford.
But cities were not simply condemned because they were big or ill tuned for the industrial expansion that had seized them. What was wonderful and exciting about them—the spontaneity, the togetherness of community, the creativity that comes from getting along and not getting along, the endless characters populating the streets, the chaos—never found a natural place in the American soul. The frontier spirit that was so intrinsic to the psyche of the country, the creed of individualism and ruggedness and privacy, of staking out your own piece of land and building your own house, hardly lent itself to the culture and spirit of the city. In 1890, when the Census Bureau determined that the western frontier no longer existed, that ideal of individualism was more difficult to satisfy. But the spirit of privacy, of having a separate space, exhibited itself through the patterns of settlement. In Europe, it was the cities that were valued and the suburbs that were devalued. It was the city that was a desirable place to live and the suburbs that were a drab and undesirable place to live. It was the city that was the source of life, and the idea of being close to one another was not rejected but assumed. In the United States, the opposite prevailed. A man could no longer move his family west in search of his own private homestead. But at the very least, he could go ten or fifteen miles in any direction outside the city limits and find his own house on a tidy plot of land.
“Throughout America’s history we have always looked fondly on the small town as a well-spring of our moral virtues,” said MIT political science professor Robert T. Wood in a speech he delivered in 1959. “We have always believed in the sturdy yeoman. And we have always regarded the city as a real villain in our melodramas of growth as a nation.”
If the long-range goal of federal policy has always been to help cities grow and adapt to the ever changing dynamics of their populations, then federal policy has failed despite the goodness of its intentions. But if the long-range goal of federal policy has been the very opposite—to slowly and deliberately defrock cities, diminish their influence, and promote instead a distinct and separate suburban culture based on race and socioeconomics and privacy—then federal policy has been enormously successful.
“The lasting damage done by the national government was that it put its seal of approval on ethnic and racial discrimination and developed policies which had the result of the practical abandonment of large sections of older, industrial cities,” wrote Kenneth Jackson. “The financial community saw blighted neighborhoods as physical evidence of the melting-pot mistake. To them, cities were risky because of their heterogeneity, because of their attempt to bring various people together harmoniously. Such mixing, they believed, had but two consequences—the decline of both the human race and of property values.”
As Ed Rendell rode in a limousine with the president of the United States, he had a choice of ways in which to reinforce the point of what federal policy had really done to the country’s cities. He could point out, as he did so effectively, the inequity of taking jobs away from his own city, in which a quarter of the population was at the poverty level, and relocating them to an area in which 4 percent of the population was at the poverty level. As the motorcade made its way over I-95, he could have pointed to the navy yard and questioned the efficacy of silencing a place with 192 years of history and service to the country. To his left, he could have pointed out the malarial towers of Southwark and told the president how the federal government’s answer to housing for the poor in the city, in the aftermath of slum removal (also known as Negro removal), had been these high-rise horrors that were doomed to fail. He could have mused aloud about what it meant that a federal Department of Agriculture had become a Cabinet-level department in 1889 whereas a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development had not been established until 1965.
Or he could have just given the president two maps: one would have been the map prepared by the federal HOLC appraisers in 1937, with its shades of green and blue and yellow and red; the other would have been a map of the city in 1993, similarly colored, showing the areas with the greatest loss of population and vacant housing. Holding the maps side by side, looking at them for several seconds, the president would have discovered what anyone else would have
discovered: despite a span of fifty-five years and eleven months, they were virtually the same in terms of what they revealed; they were mirrors of each other.
North Philadelphia had been painted red by the HOLC appraisers, meaning it wasn’t worth mortgage investment. In the forty years between 1950 and 1990, North Philadelphia had lost 53 percent of its population; it now had a vacancy rate of 17 percent and contained 11,512 abandoned residential structures. South Philadelphia had been painted the red of obsolescence by the HOLC appraisers. Subsequently, in the forty years between 1950 and 1990, South Philadelphia had lost 45 percent of its population; it now had a vacancy rate of 12 percent and contained 4,185 abandoned residential structures. West Philadelphia had been painted red by the HOLC appraisers. In the forty years between 1950 and 1990, West Philadelphia had lost 33 percent of its population; it now had a vacancy rate of 12 percent and contained 4,118 abandoned structures. Kensington had been painted red by the HOLC appraisers. In the forty years between 1950 and 1990, Kensington had lost 37 percent of its population; it now had a vacancy rate of 10 percent and contained 1,712 abandoned structures. Virtually all the suburbs favored by HOLC, on the other hand, ultimately grew into vibrant and steady residential areas.
Was it fate that had driven these cataclysmic changes? Or were they the result of the prophecies of those federal appraisers, who saw the city as doomed? In the outlines of those two maps, capable of being laid on top of each other like identical twins even though one was old and the other modern, the answer was apparent: by predicting the obsolescence of so much of the city, they had guaranteed it; by promoting the promised land of the suburbs, they had guaranteed it.
IV
In city after city, the changing dynamics of population coupled with a catastrophic loss in the industrial base made urban America more dependent on the federal government than ever before. But in the reality of politics, the reality in which money, public works projects, and certain policies flowed because they meant votes, the influence of cities in the national arena had never counted for less. Cities could deliver votes, but not in the way that had counted in the past, not in the way that had made Roosevelt and Kennedy and Johnson feel something of a political debt to them. Of all the facts that had been written about the 1992 presidential election, the one that was the most startling in what it revealed about the country—and was perhaps focused on the least—was that for the first time ever a majority of the country’s voters lived in the suburbs.
In a piece in The Atlantic Monthly in July 1992 entitled “The Suburban Century Begins,” William Schneider wrote that “urban America is facing extreme economic pressure and the loss of political influence. The cities feel neglected, and with good reason: they are the declining sector of American life.”
Schneider’s exhaustive analysis showed that in metropolitan areas around the country the huge margins of urban votes that had swept Democrats into office in the past could now be outmatched by the margins of suburban votes: “The urban base doesn’t have enough votes anymore. The Democrats have to break into the suburbs by proving that they understand something they have never made an effort to understand in the past—namely, the values and priorities of suburban America.”
The clout of America’s cities was little more than a whisper in the rant of retirees and health care providers and failed savings and loans and those who wanted their personal and property taxes lowered. The obsession was with the middle class, the same middle class that had begun to empty out of the cities forty years earlier, thanks in no small measure to the incentives of the federal government. Cities weren’t ignored in the conference rooms and offices of the nation’s lawmakers in Washington. Instead, they were treated with the faint whiff of patronization; the mayors who represented them were patted on the head, promised careful thought on the subject, and then quietly whisked away. The attitude toward cities could be measured in urban policy—more precisely, what urban policy?—and it could be measured in reams of statistical and demographic data showing the mightiness of the suburbs.
For Ed Rendell, it could also be measured in the personal interactions of one day spent in Washington in May 1992. The riots in Los Angeles had occurred less than a month earlier, so there was now an impetus for Rendell and the nation’s other big-city mayors to be there, beyond the usual hat-in-hand begging. The window of opportunity for cities had presumably never been opened wider, for the riots had given proof to the mayors’ repeated warnings that it was only a matter of time before hopelessness and despair resulted in violence and lawlessness. In the reactive responses of Washington, riots were strangely good for cities; it was no accident that enough political support for a Department of Housing and Urban Development, which had been actively discussed and debated since the late 1950s, materialized only after the 1964 riots.
In a round of private meetings on that day in May, Rendell came face-to-face with the men who moved Washington, or who at least tried to move it despite the perpetual gridlock that now defined it—Bradley, Cranston, Dole, Danforth, Durenberger, Kasten, Kerry, Lautenberg, Moynihan, Mitchell. Just as important, he came face-to-face with the men behind the men, the chiefs of staff and deputy chiefs of staff who knew how to drive and push policy. He also came face-to-face with other big-city mayors—Ray Flynn of Boston, David Dinkins of New York, Maynard Jackson of Atlanta, among others. Without the media there to tamp the dialogue into meaningless pabulum, the talk was direct and unadulterated.
Ray Flynn talked about an altercation that had recently taken place at a Boston church in the aftermath of a drive-by shooting. Upset by the killing, nine gang leaders had paid their condolences by interrupting the funeral and stabbing one of the friends of the deceased. Despite a wave of national publicity, the city had remained calm. “We kept the lid on things,” said Flynn, speaking with the humility of relief. “The business community congratulated us. I don’t know how the hell we did it. Just by holding people’s hands every day.” But for how long could Boston escape? For how long could any city escape?
“Cities are beginning to come apart at the seams,” said Flynn. “And it’s not just Los Angeles. It could happen in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia—any city. We don’t want to talk about it, but it’s evident.”
“We use the term underclass,” said Jackson of Atlanta. “Under who? Under what? These are Americans digging into the garbage cans of our streets, living in the viaducts of our tunnels. I’m not just trying to get across the reality. I’m trying to get across the urgency. I don’t think we have time to play around with this one. The issue is not, Can we keep the lid on? The issue is, When will the lid come off?”
“How in the hell can the Congress be talking about twenty-four, twenty-five billion dollars of aid in the Soviet Union and just about every other place in the world while our country is coming apart at the seams?” asked Dinkins.
The shared ground of their rhetoric, coupled with the sympathy of at least some of the senators they encountered, emboldened them. Under the umbrella of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, they agreed to ask for $35 billion in federal aid.
Rendell was hardly silent during the meetings. He too shared the fears of his fellow mayors. But the amount being requested seemed preposterous to him, not because the cities didn’t deserve it but because he knew they would never get it, regardless of the impetus of the L.A. riots. He seemed more inclined to listen to the comments of Senator Bob Dole, who, unlike his colleagues, Democrat or Republican, saw little purpose in being obsequious with men who presided over something that the majority of Americans didn’t care about. Given the nature of Washington politics, said Dole, there was a chance for the cities to get something, but the window was already closing. “We don’t have a very long attention span. In my view, it’s going to have to be done in the next thirty days. Even in the two weeks since L.A., there are already voters saying, ‘What are we doing this for?’ ”
Rendell himself favored the tactics of compromise and conciliation that had worked so well in Philadelphi
a—not what should happen, but what could happen given the political reality. He advocated something far more modest than what the other mayors were asking for: $4 billion to $5 billion in urban aid, precisely what the Bush administration was giving Russia, and an extensive program of urban enterprise zones. The amount wasn’t plucked from the air but contained a clever bit of political blackmail: if President Bush wasn’t willing to give such aid to cities, then the message was clear that he cared more about Soviet citizens than he did about the citizens of his own country. “The hardest thing to understand is that we’re not Washington bashers,” said Rendell to Dole’s deputy chief of staff, Jim Wittinghill, in the privacy of Dole’s Senate office. “The frustration out there and the hopelessness out there is enormous. Of all the emotions out there, lack of hope is the most tantamount. If we don’t do something about that, cities are going to burn.
“Everyone tells us there’s no money. For S and Ls, we find money. For Russia, we find money. For space stations, we find money. It’s very hard for us to hear there’s no money.”
Aware of how the suburban middle class ruled, he then posed the problem in a startlingly blunt way. “Even if you say, ‘Screw the cities,’ then you’re going to have to pay a ton of police to encircle us and keep us in.”
Jim Dyer, the president’s deputy assistant for legislative affairs, sounded encouraging when he met with Rendell later that day. “I think there’s a consensus between liberals and conservatives that we really ought to be trying to do something here.” He actually seemed sympathetic to the plight of the cities, although the bookshelf of the office he was in, which included such notable titles as The Homosexual Network and Abortion Providers, made the moment seem slightly hollow.
A Prayer for the City Page 29