As conservatives set out to forge a positive governing agenda, an area to which they should turn their attention is that of the future of American cities. An “urban agenda” has, to be sure, been synonymous with liberalism–at least since Lyndon Johnson established the Department of Housing and Urban Development–but, in reality, it is conservatism which has brought greater benefits to cities in recent years and offers new if not widely-known policy ideas which hold more promise than yet another generation of subsidized housing and jobs programs which dominate the liberal menu. The liberal approach to cities has had a long series of incarnations since the Johnson era: HUD, Model Cities, Community Development Bloc grants,, Empowerment Zones, community development corporations and housing vouchers. They promised they could both rebuild declining neighborhoods–and provide a hand up for the urban underclass. In reality, they did little of either–instead, renovating scattered buildings at great expense and providing non-profit social service jobs, rather than sparking economic dynamism. If the Democratic urban agenda had worked, then Cleveland, Buffalo and Detroit would all be booming, rather than being the dangerous ghost towns they’ve become.
Conservatives don’t talk much about cities but actually have an urban policy of which to boast. Most notably, the triumph of New York-style crime prevention-oriented policing has led to a public safety revolution, one that allows poorer neighborhoods and their residents to thrive by actually reducing crime. “Compstat” policing has served as a rebuke to liberals who insisted that only some ill-defined social justice utopia would ever cut crime; instead, it turns out that cutting crime allows cities to rebound. In New York, where property values in Brooklyn and Harlem have skyrocketed, the numbers are simply stunning–a drop in murder from 2200 in 1990 to just 471 last year–a drop that benefits at-risk minority group members the most by literally saving their lives.
