Reflecting on past hope in "reforming" federal cabinet agencies to better focus on urban and rural planning and economic development needs

Seeing an article ("Trump's HUD pick, Scott Turner, faces questions on the Hill: Trump nominee to lead HUD says the agency is failing in its mission," NPR) about the confirmation hearings for Scott Turner as the Secretary of the Department Housing and Urban Development, reminded me about all the "good ideas" I had for the Obama Administration in reconfiguring certain agencies to better focus on urban and rural matters.

Given all the financial needs for cities, Turner argues that there is enough money already in HUD's budget, that it needs to be used better.  And he advocates for the continued promotion of Opportunity Zones which are special tax credit investment districts ("I figured out why Opportunity Zones won't amount to much: no planning," 2019, "Opportunity Zones and revitalization planning," 2021).

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From "How will Obama relate to the District?,"  11/6/2008 (some edits)

I am not really excited by the Obama "Office of Urban Policy." As I wrote before, I'd rather see a reconfiguring of HUD around Cities, Regions and Urban Ecology (sustainability), merging in some parts of the EPA and DOE smart growth operations, local and regional Economic Development aspects of the Dept. of Commerce, and an urban-regional transportation section that would be a joint agency of the US DOT and the new Dept. of Cities, Regions, and Urban Ecology.

Similarly, I would redefine the Dept. of Agriculture as the Dept. of Agriculture, Rural Development, and Sustainability, and refigure the departments some. Parts of the Dept. of Interior would be merged into it. I don't know how to deal with the National Park Service, probably I would create a Department of Culture, Tourism (from the Dept. of Commerce), Humanities and Arts that would take that function and others. And the Dept. of Education needs to be repositioned and rebranded as well towards lifelong learning and knowledge development and realization.

At the local level, I argue that planning and zoning is supposed to be about improving quality of life first, foremost, and always. Similarly, on the regional-state-national-global dimensions, that is what government is supposed to or at least ought to do.

We need to repattern our government agencies at all levels in terms of their being focused on and achieving these missions.

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From "The federal government and cities," 7/28/2008

Professor Sudhir Venkatesh of Columbia University has an op-ed in the New York Times, about the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, entitled "To Fight Poverty, Tear Down HUD." He says that HUD is focused on cities, and that metropolitan regions and connections between cities are more important.

I would say that HUD has two missions that aren't necessarily congruent. One focuses on developing housing for poor people. The other is on urban development and revitalization.

The belief in the field is that these missions are in one and the same. But I think it's fair to say that improving housing for poor people didn't improve cities.

At the library today I happened onto a monograph series from the Society of Economic Anthropology. One of the collections is entitled "Economic Analysis Beyond the Local System."

I thought about the aptness of that title in terms of what I think about and discuss in terms of thinking and addressing local issues on the different scales of local-neighborhood, local-city, and even local-region, although for the most part I think about this within the city, so that I think about this mostly in terms of how neighborhood planning processes fail to engage with and acknowledge citywide needs and concerns simultaneously.

But this idea of analysis beyond the local system is key to understanding urban issues and urban poverty and urban growth, as well as the relationship between municipalities and other levels of government be they local such as with counties, regional such as with metropolitan planning organizations, states, or the federal government.

Getting back to Prof. Venkatesh's article, cities need to be innovative and energetic (see the writings of Richard Florida, Charles Landry, even Edward Glaeser, among others) and the last thing a government agency, especially at the federal level, is concerned with is innovation.

One of the ways that HUD could be better is if it too focused on "indicative planning" or building the capacity for vision. The UK planning agencies produce memos and reports, ranging from "Planning Policy Guidance" memos, to incredible reports such as Living Places: Cleaner, Safer, Greener, as well as the work done by organizations such as the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and English Partnerships.

I don't really feel as if we have an equivalent set of planning guidance and stretching and pushing and striving in a similar fashion here in the United States.

If HUD published PPG memos on linking land use and transportation planning, shifting from an automobility planning paradigm, the link between density and livability as well as transit success, building a local economy, foodways and urban agriculture, eliminating free parking, accessibility planning linking land use and transportation infrastructure in land use decision-making, rebuilding a system of railroad-based transportation, etc., we would be far better ahead than we are now.

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While I mentioned transit, I didn't mention it enough.  Transit cities are more wealthy than automobile-dependent cities.  Rural areas with transit access--trains, inter-city bus, airlines--are better connected and more wealthy than areas without such access.

Transit as a primary mode should be promoted as an economic development augur.

In cities especially, modern streetcars are performing that function.

-- "DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," 2015