Word: urbanization
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...Zone," a nonprofit antipoverty effort that Obama hopes to replicate in 20 cities across the country. When Obama got involved with civil liberties issues as a state legislator, it was to spearhead a law requiring the videotaping of all confessions and interrogations in capital cases, which disproportionately involve urban defendants in Illinois...
...course, it's not exactly unusual for Democratic politicians to focus on civil liberties issues or urban poverty. But Obama's intimacy with urban settings has made him open to heterodox approaches to certain problems. On education, the Chicago Tribune has described him as a "leading advocate in Illinois of charter schools," which many of his Democratic colleagues are still reluctant to champion. Obama has embraced the role of faith-based organizations in delivering social services and made clear his intention to expand George W. Bush's federal faith-based initiative. In discussing teen pregnancy, he says there are steps...
What really sets Obama apart, however, is that despite his sensitivity to the problems that plague some urban neighborhoods, he does not view cities primarily as problems to be solved. "Federal policy has traditionally treated cities as victims," says Greg Nichols, mayor of Seattle. Ever since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, he explains, government has set up perverse incentives for cities by isolating funds in programs set aside for the neediest, most desperate localities. It's the urban policy equivalent of treating someone in the emergency room when they get seriously ill instead of investing in ongoing primary care...
...live in a city, you look at them like they're basket cases," says Amy Liu, deputy director of the Brooking Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. "But Obama doesn't talk about urban policy in the traditional sense of distressed neighborhoods and crime. He talks about the assets he sees and about leveraging those assets." When Obama spoke to the U.S. Conference of Mayors last June, he argued that there was a "new metropolitan reality" in which "strong cities are the building blocks of strong regions." Leaving cities to muddle through on their own while focusing on suburbs and exurbs...
...Plan to Stimulate Urban Prosperity," developed by Obama's campaign, does address crime and poverty. But the majority of its points are focused on building sustainable communities, encouraging green urban policies and supporting "innovation clusters" like North Carolina's Research Triangle. Some of the proposals may be difficult or impossible to translate into federal policy. "They're trying to reproduce what are essentially private initiatives on a national scale," says Glaeser. "Doing that from the top down is very problematic...