For decades, the government's urban policy focused on dealing with, or ignoring, the cities' problems: reducing crime and grime and addressing poverty. In the process, the core city became estranged from even its close-in suburbs, not to mention the sprawling developments further out. Cutthroat competition for jobs and public money ensued. Arguments over the responsibility for dealing with problems like homelessness and crime increased, spawning corrosive contempt on both sides of the city line.
Now, the region's dense housing stock, existing infrastructure and its role as an incubator of innovation and creativity could become the shared rebuilding blocks the new economy needs.
That is, if the family feud can be put aside in favor of collective decision-making among city, suburb and exurb in both Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey.
When gas prices spiked last summer, so did the demand for alternative transportation.
But only metropolitan regions had the robust transit systems already in place to meet the need - and public-transit ridership rose to its highest point in more than 50 years. That's just one of the examples of how the shifting demands of the global economy are well-matched by what cities have offered all along. There are others: the increasing attractiveness of a more compact life - street grids and sidewalks, dense housing mixed in with shopping and entertainment that make an active, independent lifestyle for kids and seniors more accessible.
