In the 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama said great things about cities. And cities did great things for him.

More than a year before Election Day the then-senator pledged to appoint "a new director of Urban Policy who will cut through the disorganized bureaucracy that currently exists and report directly to me." A year later and a few weeks before he accepted the Democratic nomination, Obama told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami that "the truth is, what our cities need isn’t just a partner. What you need is a partner who knows that the old ways of looking at our cities just won’t do; who knows that our nation and our cities are undergoing a historic transformation."

City Limits Magazine


January 2011:
The UnPlanned City

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Jarrett Murphy
Jarrett Murphy
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When the balloting was over, Obama had won 63 percent of urban voters to John McCain's 35 percent, a solid gain over John Kerry's 54-45 urban advantage versus President Bush. Indeed, the nation's 50 largest cities comprise 16 percent of the U.S. population, but 86 percent of Obama's popular vote margin came from the counties containing those cities.

With his political roots in Chicago's South Side, Obama had the most urban pedigree of any president since one-time New York City police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. And unlike earlier discussions of cities on the national stage, Obama's focus was as much on planning as on programs. "We need to promote strong cities as the backbone of regional growth," Obama said on the campaign trail. "And yet, Washington remains trapped in an earlier era, wedded to an outdated 'urban' agenda that focuses exclusively on the problems in our cities, and ignores our growing metro areas; an agenda that confuses anti-poverty policy with a metropolitan strategy, and ends up hurting both. "

He added: "Now is not the time for small plans. Now is the time for bold action to rebuild and renew America."        

As City Limits has reported, there is a push for New York comprehensive planning for its future. Quietly, the White House is making a similar push nationwide. Very quietly.

High hopes, low profile

A month after Inauguration Day, Obama made good on his promise to create a White House Office of Urban Affairs, naming as its director Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, a former urban planner. The president's executive order directed the office "to coordinate all aspects of urban policy." Carrion went on a national listening tour to learn about "best practices" already being used in nine cities that he visited from July 2009 to that December. In Philadelphia, the visit highlighted the Fresh Food Financing Initiative that brings healthy produce to underserved areas. Out in Flagstaff, Carrion toured the Northern Arizona Center for Emerging Technologies, a business incubator.         

In August 2009, Carrion joined other White House officials in a memo to all federal agencies calling for a "place-based review" of federal policies. This called on the departments to evaluate all their policies and find the ones that have a specific impact on particular places—for instance, a program that supports local workforce development—and develop ways to measure success, learn more about why the program works or doesn't, and team up with other agencies operating in the same places.