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The Planetizen News Brief

5 November 2008 - 5:00am
Smart City Radio

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

We take a look at what President-Elect Barack Obama will mean for urban planning and policy in the United States. You can also read a longer analysis of what the Obama Presidency will mean for cities and regions.

Full Transcript

Senator Barack Obama has been elected the next president of the United States. Now, as Obama prepares to take the helm, the hopes and promises of the long campaign must harden into reality. But what impact will an Obama presidency have on urban policy? A big one, according to some experts. Washington Post Columnist Neal Peirce thinks that Obama's regional focus will lead to a federal government that is very active in city issues. But he’ll likely take an approach that differs from the classic Democratic policy. In particular, Peirce points to Obama's promise to invest $200 million in annual grants to bolster "innovation clusters" -- areas of cutting-edge thinking in technology and applied science. Peirce concludes that there are, of course, many challenges ahead for an Obama presidency, but "metro America's chances [will] surely be brighter."

But Steven Malanga, senior editor for City Journal, thinks Obama's urban policies are outdated maneuvers that could have a detrimental effect on cities. He specifically calls out Obama’s support of the Community Development Block Grant program. According to Malanga, these block grants are “perhaps the most visible example of the failure of federal urban aid.” Obama’s reliance on them, he says, will only continue that record of failure.

But some of the more concrete impacts Obama’s presidency could have on the country are in the realms of infrastructure and energy. Much of the rhetoric on energy so far has focused on the obvious: reducing reliance on foreign oil, investing in renewable energy sources, cutting excess use and expanding domestic production of "clean" energy. But as the New York Times reported in August, Obama has called for an investment of $150 billion in renewable energy production -- an investment towards a goal of doubling the nation's renewable energy sources to 10% of total needs. This is a goal he hopes to achieve by the end of his first term.

And in an allusion to the large-scale public works projects of the New Deal-era, Obama has highlighted infrastructure as a major concern for the United States. In a recent interview on MSNBC, he said that one of the most important infrastructure projects the country needs is an entirely new electricity grid system that allows for more efficient transmission of energy derived from renewable sources. If realized, this could translate to an injection of more than 5 million jobs into the U.S. economy.

In the end, however, the work of urban planning, zoning and development lies in the hands of local government, so it won't be directly affected by a new president in the day-to-day world. But if this evidence and all the election season discourse is to be believed, an Obama presidency could be one more closely focused on the needs and the importance of urban areas than presidencies of recent past.

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In short, we’ve seen the last of the cheap oil on which we’ve built our economy, our communities, and our daily lives.
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