Word: urbane
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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URBANOLOGISTS are an optimistic breed. The most recent endeavor of Daniel P. Moynihan. Presidential Advisor on Urban Alfairs, is to outline in ten points what he hopes can become the first national urban policy. The initial draft ("Toward a National Urban Policy") appeared in the fall issue of Public Interest and a second will appear in book form this spring. These ten points quickly collapse into three major recommendations: to relocate slumdwellers, to reorganize the political and fiscal bases of local government, and to encourage more national decision-making in the federal government...
...irony- intentional or not- to these priorities. Both major parties now agree that the problems of the cities have enormous price tags and must await the end of the Vietnam war. The peace dividend, however small, must be forthcoming before the nation commits itself to more expensive programs. Urban problems are believed expensive because Americans visualize them as deficiencies in physical capital-buildings that must be turndown, highways that must be built. Yet the problems that Moynihan finds most critical cost relatively little money. Their real costs are political and social, in amounts neither the Administration nor the nation...
...defining an urban policy, however, Moynihan is able to spell out in boldface his own views on environment and violence. To Moynihan, the "urban problem" means chiefly the social isolation of the black minority. The crisis of authority in the cities- the riots, the white backlash, the flight of the mayors-originates in the social disorganization of the black poor. A heavy emphasis on environment is regarded by many black political activists as demeaning. Moynihan, though, steadfastly believes that the ghettoes are "human cesspools" and that the government should relocate blacks throughout the metropolitan area...
...feints toward the Wallace constituency. The surest way to lose a silent majority, as any politician knows, is a risky social experiment. Regardless of ideology Moynihan is emotionally and ultimately a Democrat. Only the Democrats have commitments to the minority groups, which stand to gain most from a "national urban policy...
Lesser and Kagan stressed that these seminar groups began by discussing just what the objective of an educational television program, aimed at urban children, should be and in what ways the television medium could be used to achieve this objective. It was out of these discussions that the particular format of "Sesame Street" evolved...