A quote from Malanga in City Journal:
Nothing could be more misguided than to renew this “tin-cup urbanism,” as some have called it. Starting in the late 1960s, mayors in struggling cities extended their palms for hundreds of billions of federal dollars that accomplished little good and often worsened the problems that they sought to fix. Beginning in the early nineties, however, a small group of reform-minded mayors—with New York’s Rudy Giuliani and Milwaukee’s John Norquist in the vanguard—jettisoned tin-cup urbanism and began developing their own bottom-up solutions to city problems. Their innovations made cities safer, put welfare recipients to work, and offered kids in failing school systems new choices, bringing about an incomplete, but very real, urban revival.
Yet this reform movement remains anathema to many liberal politicians, academics, and journalists, who have ignored or tried to downplay its achievements because it conflicts with their left-of-center views. The arrival on the scene of Obama, a former Chicago community activist and the first presidential nominee in recent memory to rise out of urban politics, has given these back-to-the-future voices their best chance in years to advance a liberal War on Poverty–style agenda. As the nation debates its future in the current presidential race, it’s crucial to remember what has worked to revive cities—and what hasn’t.
Whole thing here.
