In Search of a Real Urban Policy

is an editorial in today's New York Times.

Of course, I wish cities would have urban, rather than suburban, policies too.

Looking to the north, there is interesting writing about this same problem in the Toronto Star.

For example this piece "Bridging Toronto's divides: Only a socially inclusive strategy can overcome the twin `paradoxes of globalization'" states:

Recognizing that no single actor can do it, four key players must be at the table.

City of Toronto: The level of government closest to the challenges, with policy frameworks for social development and neighbourhood revitalization, provides a platform for targeting investments in and across the social and geographic divides.

Community Networks: Toronto's civil society is rich in grassroots organizations that deliver services, conduct research and reach out to the most marginalized. This network represents a crucial intermediary between residents and governments, helping ensure strategies reflect diverse communities.

Citizens: Successfully tackling exclusion means hearing directly from residents coping with few services, juggling child care and two jobs, and struggling to pay the rent. Any solutions must be grounded in their lived experiences.

Provincial and federal governments: With most of the money and power to transform cities, they must ensure policies for income security, immigrant settlement, affordable housing and job training that can break down Toronto's opportunity divides. A strong safety net can be supplemented by special resources for parts of the city falling behind. Ontario's recent anti-poverty initiatives are a start.

While these different pieces of a socially inclusive creative city strategy already exist, they are not aligned or, in the current jargon, "joined-up." The result is diffusion of scarce resources, duplication of effort, and adversarial attitudes. Regrettably, the intergovernmental urban policy channels remain mostly cluttered with buck-passing and jurisdictional squabbles.

This Toronto Star page has many links to work by the Toronto City Summit Alliance.

It's great that the New York Times editorializes that politicians should focus on cities. As Jane Jacobs pointed out long ago in The Economy of Cities and Cities and the Wealth of Nations, cities drive the economies of metropolitan regions.

But we also need to help ourselves.

Lately, I think about this a lot in terms of policies and actions that either create value or destroy value. Things like baseball stadiums, for the most part, destroy value. Infrastructure investments like transit systems (if properly placed, and with linkage-based land use planning) or great university systems, create value.

Also see, "Wanted: A Plan for the Cities to Save Themselves" from the Black Commentator. Links to the other four articles in the series are at the end of the entry.