Neal Peirce examined which presidential candidate would be better for American cities and urban areas in a recent article on Citiwire.net. While Barack Obama plans to create the first-ever White House Office on Urban Policy and made clear his commitment to urban issues at the June 2008 U.S. Conference of Mayors, John McCain has given little mention to the needs of transit, urban infrastructure, and other problems the nation’s cities are facing.
Pierce took a quote from Barack Obama’s address at the mayors conference that illustrates his forward-thinking attitude about urban America:
“Yes, we need to fight poverty,… fight crime… But we also need to stop seeing our cities as the problem and start seeing them as the solution. Because strong cities are the building blocks of strong regions, and strong regions are essential for a strong America.”
Obama understands that cities themselves do not innately produce crime, but the neglect and rejection of urban areas in national policy over the past half-century has allowed this decay to occur. With John McCain’s lack of any palpable urban policy and then Sarah Palin’s ridicule of Obama’s work as a community organizer in urban Chicago neighborhoods, it is clear which candidate will benefit the future of America’s cities.
Rob Goodspeed also has a collection of good posts about Obama on his blog The Goodspeed Update, including an interesting post from May, comparing the amount of content for different issues each candidate offered on their websites.
> McCain Versus Obama: Who’s Best for Cities?
