Housing and Transportation

In Chicago, like most other big cities in America, manufacturing was once the core of the urban economy — until recent decades, when most of it moved out to suburban areas and beyond. But while much smaller today, manufacturing still makes a vital contribution that cities should work hard to maintain.

The strongholds of municipal liberalism are gone; the coalition of immigrants, unionists, poor people, and neighborhoods has been replaced by alliances between tough-on-crime Republican mayors and organized business. But the seeds of a revival are there.

As federal funding dwindles, we need new economic arrangements and political coalitions to unite city and suburb.

All over the country, public transit systems are losing ridership. As Chicago’s story makes clear, the real source of the problem is the sprawling and balkanized shape of America’s metropolises.

In Washington these days, HUD is about as popular as mosquitoes. But there’s a way to make housing more affordable without the old bureaucracy.

Everyone seems to agree that public housing has no redeeming value — everyone, that is, but the tenants.

A more extended version of this article, complete with references, appears in the Winter 1995 issue of PS, a publication of the American Political Science Association. This work, originally delivered as the inaugural Ithiel de Sola Pool Lecture, builds on Putnam’s earlier articles, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy (January 1995) and […]