The problem of America’s cities, after all, is really two problems wrapped up in one. The first is the problem of an urban underclass, largely black and Hispanic, cut off geographically and socially from the mainstream world of work. Here, all the candidates emphasize “community development,” the idea that with the right government initiatives the ghettos can be revived as centers of employment and civic life. Enterprise zones are only the main ingredient in this community-development recipe. Bush and Perot would add plans to let public-housing tenants purchase their apartments. Clinton, for his part, tosses in a Dukakis-like list of gimmicks: “community-development banks” to make loans to homeowners and entrepreneurs, Community Development Block Grants to rebuild roads and housing, and so on.
What none of the candidates admit is that the goal of making the ghettos bloom is probably quixotic. “I’m profoundly skeptical,” says Nicholas Lemann, whose book “The Promised Land” describes the failed attempts of Washington policymakers to produce “community development” in the 1960s. Lemann praises efforts to make ghettos safer (Clinton promises 100,000 new police officers; Bush wants to “weed out” known criminals). But creating jobs in the ghettos is a different matter. Such efforts, Lemann notes, have never worked.
That may be because the crisis of the inner cities has as much to do with culture as with lack of capital. In the worst inner-city neighborhoods, 80 percent of the children live in fatherless families, while half the population is or. welfare. Without “role models,” young men in these communities drift out of the labor market into the world of crime and hustle. Will they flock to take advantage of Bush’s “5 percent refundable tax credit” on wages earned within enterprise zones? Will they suddenly open “community-based microenterprises” if Clinton provides credit and sets up “peer groups”? Yes, some will, but enough to transform the ghetto?
“What’s already happening, and what’s working,” Lemann notes, “is people getting out of the ghettos for a better life. So your paradigm shouldn’t be … stimulating a massive migration into the ghettos.” Indeed, one of the most successful antipoverty efforts of recent years has been Chicago’s Gautreaux program, which helps tenants in ghetto housing projects move to private dwellings in the suburbs. Two thirds of the family heads who move find jobs within five years, including almost half of those who’ve never worked before. Clinton’s policy papers don’t mention Gautreaux; Bush’s budget includes only a tiny “demonstration project” to help 1,500 families move.
For those who stay behind in the ghettos, the key to transforming the “culture of poverty” may be transforming the welfare system that sustains that culture. Both Bush and Clinton have suggested putting time limits on welfare, after which recipients would have to go to work, in public-service jobs if necessary. But only Clinton would impose this requirement nationwide. (Bush would merely allow state experiments.) Enforced vigorously, Clinton’s time limit might do more to dissolve the culture of poverty than all the enterprise zones the candidates could imagine.
Even if the underclass were assimilated tomorrow, however, a second urban crisis would remain. This is the fiscal dilemma created when the affluent move to suburbs, decimating the tax base of central cities. The conventional solution to this problem-shipping bushels of federal dollars to the cities-is unavailable. The federal government doesn’t have the money. David Rusk, ex-mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., points to a sensible alternative. In his forthcoming book, “Cities Without Suburbs,” Rusk compares two types of cities. “Low elasticity” cities like New York and Detroit never expanded their boundaries to include their suburbs. “Hyperelastic” cities (such as San Diego, Ft. Worth, Texas, and Greensboro, N.C.) either annexed surrounding land or had enough vacant land within their borders to accommodate expansion. Sure enough, cities in the first group have big problems-loss of population, poverty and mediocre bond ratings-even when the suburbs surrounding them are prosperous. But cities with inclusive borders have gained income and population while maintaining solid bond ratings.
The solution seems obvious: force the fiercely independent, affluent suburbs to combine with the impoverished central cities. Unfortunately, the candidate with enough guts to propose that will not be onstage this week.
