White House's urban push: Good for all?

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama has been called the first urban president.

Adolfo Carrion is the first White House director of urban affairs.

The former borough president from New York and schoolteacher is overseeing a White House policy of ensuring that investments "reflect the reality of modern urban America.''

"What's true of the United States is even truer of the rest of the world. The majority of the world's population is now living in the cities,'' Carrion said today at the Bloomberg Washington Summit at the Newseum. "This urban discussion that we're having about how the president asked us to invest (in the cities more intelligently) has global implications.''

What's the message for rural America, then?

"What's good for urban, suburban, exurban America... is good for rural America,'' he said. "We've been to at least a dozen cities'' - including Chicago, Philadelphia and many more. What stood out, he said, was Philadelphia's relationship with farming communities - "they came to an agreement that said we're going to build a 65,000 square-foot supermarket "which built "organic relationships'' between the farm community and city.''

Also, he said, "there's been a shift in the definition of what urban is,'' sad Carrion, who served as Bronx bourough president, a community of 1.4 million. "his is not just about Phoenix. It's about Mesa and Scotsdale... The whole definition has been shifted.''

To critics, Carrion is one of those White House "czars,'' who influence big national policy without congressional oversight. And people here today were asking about the pace of stimulus spending, and what the cities are gettng out of it. Half the money has gone out the door, Carrion said of a work in progress. "One of the strategies,'' he noted, "includes an $8 billion project for high-speed rail.''

"Our challenge is that we slow down the urban sprawl, and continue to urge people to move into urban areas,'' Carrion said, asked about Obama's role as the urban president. "He is on a very short list of presidents who get 'the urban thing.'... The experience of this president, having lived, stuided worked... He is a lover of cities. That informs everything that we do.''