Alex MacGillis had a thoughtful essay in the Post this weekend on Obama's potential as the first "metropolitan" president. Not "urban," but "metro" -- as in the conception of cities and their suburbs as intimately tied to one another, and the understanding of their public policy concerns as largely the same.
Obama should find ways to address urban problems in a suburban context -- focusing not just on West Baltimore or North Philadelphia, say, but also on suburban North Las Vegas, which has more concentrated poverty than Las Vegas proper. The same goes for spending on public transit. "If he frames something like that as being about metro competitiveness, he can do a lot," [Robert] Lang said. "It should be, 'Hey, suburban guy sitting in traffic, would you like transit?' instead of 'I'm going to take your money and spend it in places you don't visit.'"
This is an optimistic way of viewing regional politics in America. If you consider the failure of congestion pricing in New York City, or the resistance of suburban communities nationwide to the racial and socioeconomic integration of schools, it's easy to see that cultural and political tensions between cities and suburbs remain deep-seated. Because of gas prices, suburbanites do want better transit, for sure. But the issues at play are more complex than that and require changes in the suburban lifestyle; changes that, so far, have been difficult to enforce or even incentivize politically. In most states we still can't regionalize school districts or equalize school funding. Most communities can't or won't pass limits on parking spaces or invest significantly in transit. Realistically, we are a long way away from most people identifying with the larger environmental and social needs of the metropolitan regions from which they hail.
--Dana Goldstein
