When I began studying cities some thirty years ago, the central questions concerned racial conflict, the movement of jobs and people out of the central cities, the resulting erosion of the tax base, and the quality of city services. Alas, these are the same questions that occupy most of us still. There is a kind of dreary sameness about city problems, it would seem, a sameness that applies not just to the passing years but also across cities. What is true of Pittsburgh seems to apply just as well to Dallas.

Now, as it happens, thirty years ago many people thought that the problems I have mentioned could be alleviated with a substantial increase in the use of federal authority and federal resources. This was done, although many have argued, with some plausibility that we did not do enough with regard to either resources or time commitment.

Still, if these are the quintessential urban problems, we were right then, and we would be right now, to give the greatest attention to the deployment of national socio-economic resources through the actions of the federal government. This is simply because the urban problems I have listed are largely consequences of a national political economy that has rarely produced full employment at reasonable wages; that has too often reinforced racial subordination; that has been slow at dismantling some of the principal effects of that subordination; that has done too little to cushion many citizens from the declining economic returns to unskilled labor; and that has done too little to moderate growing economic inequality.

There is, however, a sense in which the roots of economic and racial inequities also flow from the organization of local political life. They are, in part, a consequence of local government boundaries. We build whole new cities in the suburbs, and little of the wealth created flows to the central cities--and, indeed, some or perhaps even much of that economic activity actually hurts central cities by moving jobs that otherwise might stay in the center to places that low-skilled city dwellers find difficult to reach.

I should add, in this context, that cities themselves are engines of economic inequality. The burdens of redevelopment still fall on the poor and vulnerable, as they have during the whole post-war period. As well, the property tax, on which local governments heavily rely, is, on balance, regressive, if we assume that this tax is passed along to renters.

Not surprisingly, given these features of the politics of cities, we argue and struggle over how to make it easier for those hurt by redevelopment to have their voices heard; we worry about curtailing or altering the path of redevelopment; we attempt to improve the delivery of city services, especially to the needy and vulnerable; and we work to attract new businesses to the central city and attempt to keep in place the businesses already located there.

It is with these sorts of matters that analyses of city politics and city problems typically stop. We regularly repeat that we need to act nationally to mitigate the negative effects of national forces that are increasing inequality and reinforcing racial subordination. We consider ways to make the effects of city politics and policy less economically regressive. And sometimes we even consider whether the boundaries of local governments might be altered to enable them directly to attack urban problems thrown up by the effects of the parceling out of political authority to a large number of local governments in metropolitan areas.