Urban Policy Focus
By Daniel Strauss - Nov 12th, 2008 at 2:51 pmThe consensus I’m getting from people I trust is that President-elect Obama’s Office of Urban Policy should apply the priorities of other departments like those of Transportation and Energy to cities, but with a special focus on affordable housing. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of what an Urban Policy department could preside over is currently the charge of several other governmental offices. It’s not like the government doesn’t have organizations that deal with energy or transportation, but there’s no department whose specific mandate is to concern itself with what transportation policy or carbon emissions standards means for cities, to take a couple examples.
What’s most important, though, is for the future Office of Urban Policy to focus on providing good housing policy. Cities fail when housing is affordable for only the rich, due to the resultant drop in socioeconomic diversity. There are a lot of things an Urban Policy department could be in charge of, because urbanism includes the environment, transportation, innovative technology, and a host of other things–but the immediate priority should be housing.
Post a Comment