Orfield Diagnosis, Hughes Prescription

Myron Orfield is the smartest regionalist around, a guy who makes political power central to his arguments for a regional agenda. This column presents a radical proposal in the face of maps showing a spreading core of urban decline and a disappearing edge of green space and farmland in Greater Philadelphia. An article of faith among regionalists is that the inside game (fighting blight and decline at the core of a metropolitan region) and the outside game (fighting sprawl and loss of amenities at the edge of a region) are two sides of the same coin. The policy challenge is getting both games on the same field, to create a mutually reinforcing set of interests, decisions and actions.