Urban Areas

For a generation, America's universities served the military-industrial complex of the Cold War. Today, corporations continue to tap academic-based research for their own profit. But now comes the question: Could colleges and universities, into which we've poured so much of our public and private wealth, do more to help the urban regions of a nation now so deeply afflicted by rising crime and racial and class polarization? Retiring as president of Harvard in 1990, Derek Bok issued a first salvo, urging universities to transform their agendas to respond to society's new and pressing needs.

In our love affair with urban development, we must be careful not to overlook the downward economic spiral of New Jersey's suburbs. In the last year, New Jersey's private sector suffered the biggest drop in employment in a decade. The job outlook has been hurt particularly by drastic cutbacks at prominent suburban New Jersey companies. An overall retrenchment in the telecommunications industry has taken its toll. Major unemployment has also occurred in our manufacturing sector.

State Farm Insurance Cos.' agreement Monday to settle discrimination charges in Toledo, Ohio, might eventually benefit low- and middle-income urban homeowners in Philadelphia and South Jersey, too. In the settlement, which stemmed from a complaint filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance and a Toledo housing group, the company pledged to offer a broader range of insurance coverage and to beef up its sales and service operations in urban areas....

Gov. McGreevey has found a new ally in his war on sprawl: the state Board of Public Utilities. In his administration's latest effort to steer development away from farm fields and toward cities, the utilities board has proposed regulations that would require builders to pay the full cost of gas, water and electric line extensions to new developments in rural townships. Builders would receive rebates for utility hookups in urban areas. The plan, which state officials say is one of the first of its kind, would end the long-standing system under which ratepayers provide subsidies for new water, electric and gas lines for sprawling suburbs.

Due to flooding, Martin Luther King Boulevard has been closed by police Friday night between Montgomery Drive and Falls Bridge. Heavy rains have swollen the Schuylkill River and other waterways around the region. A National Weather Service warning is effect until 11:30 p.m. for flooding in urban areas and small streams in Philadelphia and surrounding counties. -Robert Moran

Now that he's tamed City Hall's fiscal mess, Mayor Rendell said yesterday he believes it's time for the federal government to lend a hand. In a theme he has repeated often since taking office two years ago, Rendell told reporters at the National Press Club, "Cities simply do not have enough resources to solve their economic problems themselves. " Rendell formally released his "New Urban Agenda," a package of proposals that would rewrite federal regulations to encourage investment in cities.

In rallying for battle against suburban sprawl, no one's yet spouting Churchillian lines - something like: "We will fight them on the cornfields . . . fight 'em on the street corners. " But Pennsylvania policy makers are showing a convincing appreciation that stemming sprawl depends as much on saving urban areas as on preserving field and stream. For the most part the new compact, pedestrian-friendly communities that might make middle-class homeowners think twice about decamping for distant subdivisions aren't being built.

Gov. Corzine apparently will not intervene on behalf of environmental and animal-rights activists who want New Jersey to ditch its policy allowing the killing of bears that stray into urban areas. Responding to letters this week from the Humane Society and the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said yesterday that the bear management plan "puts the safety and security of our families first. " "The governor is supportive of that policy," Coley said in an e-mail.

Low-interest loans are available to "first-time" home buyers or to buyers in certain urban areas of New Jersey under a new $60 million tax-exempt mortgage bond issue from the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency. The mortgages are available at two rates: 9.25 percent for purchasers in New Jersey's 41 targeted urban areas and 9.45 percent for those buying elsewhere. The bonds will finance between 800 and 1,200 mortgages. The rates are below those offered by most private lenders in this area.

Travis Jinloc, 12, was from Newark and Wanda Espada, 15, from Camden - but both shared the same problems. Drugs. The lure of the drug trade. Poverty. And the attendant violence. "Having to walk home and see the drug dealers talking to other kids, that's the problem I see," said Espada, who attends the Brimm Medical Arts High School in Camden. The two youths were among almost 500 from all parts of the state who converged on Camden's Waterfront Entertainment Centre yesterday for an Urban Youth Conference sponsored by the Whitman administration that was designed to "empower young people" to deal with urban issues.

As a conservative candidate for governor, Chris Christie visited New Jersey's deeply liberal and severely impoverished urban areas. He filmed a campaign ad at Camden's infamous Tent City homeless encampment. And he released a list of 11 policy promises for "bringing back New Jersey's cities. " But nearly two years into his term, the Republican governor has fulfilled only one of those promises and has not publicly prioritized the others.  (See below for a list.) As many as four tent cities exist in Camden, hungry children are increasingly visiting the city's main soup kitchen, and the depleted police force struggles to fight rising crime.

Due to flooding, Martin Luther King Boulevard has been closed by police Friday night between Montgomery Drive and Falls Bridge. Heavy rains have swollen the Schuylkill River and other waterways around the region. A National Weather Service warning is effect until 11:30 p.m. for flooding in urban areas and small streams in Philadelphia and surrounding counties. -Robert Moran

It was one of those miserable, 40-degree, windy-and-rainy days so typical of March 2010. Yakima Coles had an appointment for a follow-up with her 3-month-old son, Hezekiah, who was born seven weeks premature. He was so early that he stayed in the hospital for three weeks after birth. But Coles couldn't make it that day to the Helen O. Dickens Center for Women's Health clinic at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The trek to West Philadelphia from her Fairmount home, about 2.4 miles, was just too much.

Reid comments from another era I was so relieved and happy to read your editorial "Seeing the light" Thursday. I totally agree with your sensible, enlightened interpretation of Sen. Harry Reid's remarks about Barack Obama's assets for winning the 2008 presidential race. I am an octogenerian and grew up thinking the word Negro had dignity and was very respectable. In reading Reid's remarks, and knowing his involvement in civil rights, I did not detect racism. I was dismayed when he had to get on his knees and apologize to the president and the world because the Republicans are always looking for ways to dishonor Obama and his allies.

The leaders of seven of the country's largest public housing agencies, including the Philadelphia Housing Authority's Carl R. Greene, have protested how the federal government plans to allocate $1 billion in economic-recovery funding. In a letter Monday to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, the executives challenged a decision to give first crack at the money to 1,550 agencies rated as "high performers. " The other 2,000 or so agencies will be eligible to compete for the remaining funding.

RE THE recent op-ed by Christine Flowers responding to Attorney General Eric Holder's comments about America being a nation of cowards when it comes to race: I have nothing to say about the ways the piece criticized his comments, but why did it bring up black-on-black crime and that a majority of the people in prison are black? We will never overcome racism unless everyone admits the roles they have in it. As to accountability, if you're not racist, then you're not. If you are, then good.

During recent debates, TV advertisements and public appearances, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have largely focused on their plans for the ailing economy. But beyond tax breaks and mortgage relief, what are their plans for people living in cities like Philadelphia? What would Democrat Obama or Republican McCain do to fight crime, reduce poverty or improve transit and public housing? While neither candidate is talking much about urban policy, there are stark differences between their proposals.

Norman J. Glickman is University Professor, Rutgers University Robert H. Wilson is Mike Hogg Professor of Urban Policy, University of Texas-Austin Lyndon Johnson, a rural Texan, was an unlikely yet passionate advocate for America's cities. Like the man himself, his urban efforts were big, bold and sweeping. He became president amid political turmoil and urban disturbances. Instead of avoiding controversial urban problems, he did what good leaders do: He tried to solve them.

Carter is right . . . Re: "Carter: Bush team is 'worst,' " May 20: Former President Jimmy Carter's comments concerning President Bush are true. Bush's "overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations," and his endorsement of "the concept of preemptive war" that is "a radical departure from all previous administrations' policies," are absolutely and unfortunately true. Bush is a very dangerous maverick who has to be stood up to and somehow contained.

Gov. Corzine apparently will not intervene on behalf of environmental and animal-rights activists who want New Jersey to ditch its policy allowing the killing of bears that stray into urban areas. Responding to letters this week from the Humane Society and the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said yesterday that the bear management plan "puts the safety and security of our families first. " "The governor is supportive of that policy," Coley said in an e-mail.