Ryan Avent, one of my favorite and one of the very best urban bloggers around, digs into Obama’s urban policy team. As a preface to his longer article which appears in Grist, Avent writes on his blog: “My thinking on the selections has evolved somewhat. Initially, I was fairly disappointed, but I’m more sanguine now.” Money quote: “The urban picks are probably just a bit more explicitly pragmatic and shouldn’t be read as a betrayal by the president.”
The best member of team city, as judged by urbanists and other progressives, is likely to be Shaun Donovan, tapped by Obama as secretary of Housing and Urban Development …A Clinton-era veteran of the agency, he’s familiar with the federal bureaucracy and managed to be effective despite institutional hurdles. More recently, he has demonstrated his knowledge of best practices in affordable housing as a capable head of New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development … Yet it’s unclear whether Donovan appreciates the scope of the housing challenge facing the nation.
From a visionary perspective, Obama’s Transportation pick is widely seen as the most baffling … Obama used the pick to name his promised Republican cabinet member (Defense secretary holdover Robert Gates excepted). Ray LaHood, a retiring downstate Illinois representative, will be handed the reins of the department at perhaps the most crucial juncture for transportation investment since the Eisenhower years …
Less remarked upon by urbanists but perhaps more disappointing, on the face of things, is Obama’s choice for head of the new Office of Urban Policy… And so the choice of Bronx Borough president Adolfo Carrion was also somewhat underwhelming. Carrion is at least nominally qualified. He’s a trained urban planner and a veteran of the New York political scene. He helped engineer redevelopment of underused portions of the Bronx … Carrion did take a courageous stand in favor of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan … There is little in Carrion’s resume to indicate that the Bronx lifer can explain the necessity of a difficult transition to increased density to residents and leaders of the nation’s great suburban expanses.
The whole piece, here, is required reading for anyone interested in American urbanism and the future of urban and regional policy.