With Urban Affairs, Everything is Amazing and Nobody’s Happy
The White House Credit: The White House
I have a favorite You Tube clip of a skit that comedian Louis C.K. does on the old Conan O’Brien show. The comedian laments how modern life — airplanes, wireless internet — is amazing, and yet nobody is happy. Watch it and laugh for a few minutes, then come back.
You could say the same thing about the urban affairs media — we have an historic White House Office of Urban Affairs, and yet the media have been skeptical of its utility since Day One. We have an office that is aligning the missions of a dozen government agencies to further the prosperity and livability of cities, and yet because urban issues aren’t the forefront of the Obama agenda — in a year when Congress passed healthcare reform and is debating immigration and climate change reform, two major earthquakes killed hundreds of thousands of people and an oil rig explosion devastated the Gulf Coast — bloggers are blaming Adolfo Carrion for not having gotten enough done in his 13-month tenure.
When the White House Office of Urban Affairs was just a twinkle in Barack Obama’s eye, reporters would call me to ask what I thought about Obama’s urban agenda. When Carrion was named the Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, they asked me what I thought of Carrion. And lately, amid rumors that Carrion was leaving office (he is leaving, but for HUD rather than for Andrew Cuomo’s campaign), reporters have asked me to weigh in on Carrion’s track record (sometimes misquoting me). All of this has prompted a bit of soul searching about what role the media should play in covering this office and national urban policy in general. Are the urban affairs media helping further an urban agenda, or just derailing it?
Here are a few hastily put-together thoughts:
1. Pick on Someone Your Own Size
The media attention to the White House Office of Urban Affairs is disproportionate to the actual size of the office. And their expectations are impossibly high given the structure of the government and the reality of urban development in the United States. The WHOUA has a staff size and budget of about the same size as Next American City. People have been expected Carrion to rewrite the rules of urban development in the United States that have accumulated over the past half-century in a term that lasted just one year. Not gonna happen. Not only is it not going to happen in one year, but possibly not in one term. These new offices—the Office of Social Innovation, or of Valerie Jarret’s Office of Public Engagement—are amorphous and new. Who knows what they can or will accomplish? But why aren’t some bloggers focusing their ire in that direction? The urban affairs media has grown exponentially, thanks to outlets like Next American City, Streetsblog, and others, so much so that we’re no longer picking on a target of our same size.
2. Criticism Should be Constructive and Well Reported
Since when did we all start quoting the Daily News? The quote about Adolfo Carrion being “bored” with his position at WHOUA practically went viral. And yet few reporters took the next logical step of trying to get a quote from Carrion or from other White House figures like Derek Douglas to weigh in on the situation. What’s worse is that all the reporting about the WHOUA has failed to propose new ideas about how this office should be functioning. Which bloggers were taking advantage of this story to propose new ideas for the WHOUA? Like .... the office should be focused on reconstructing the financing and communications methods between urban counties and the federal government? Or that it should take up the role of forcing the Dept. of Energy to come to the urban table more often? Or it should make deeper connections between our metros’ needs and immigration and climate change reform to try to sway public and political opinions on these matters.We should be putting ideas where our mouths are.
3. Recognize that Symbols Matter
Obama built his campaign on symbols. Many bloggers and commentators have taken issue with the WHOUA’s Listening Tour and speaking engagements. But the fact is that actually representing the federal government in cities around the country is powerful. If the WHOUA did nothing else except try to share the gospel of Brookings to cities that needed to hear it, and then in turn listened to those cities’ needs and informed other White House agencies about those needs, would that be a step forward?
These are just some of my thoughts—I’d love to hear yours.
Diana Lind is editor in chief of Next American City.
Slideshow: Issue 26 Launch Party
Aaron Naparstek in Brooklyn on Tue, May 04, 2010 at 2:44pm
Agree: The Urban Affairs Office is a fine thing. It’s good that the Obama Administration set it up. It is too much to expect miracles from it one year out. Obama never promised during the campaign to put urban affairs at the very top of his agenda. There should be no expectation of that being an overt top priority in the first year of his presidency.
Disagree: Adolfo Carrion was an awful choice to lead the Office. His public appearances were dreadful and inarticulate. He was unable to convey any real vision for the new office, his own role in it and the future of American cities. When you don’t have much staff, budget or political power then all you’ve really got is a bully pulpit. Carrion didn’t know how to use that. On the most fundamental level, he was a lousy advocate, a non-visionary and appeared to be either disinterested or uninformed from the beginning (which is why the “bored” quote stuck to him—it rang true).
It could be that this is an unfair assessment of Carrion. Perhaps the higher-ups at the White House abandoned, hindered or dis-empowered him in some way or another. But I doubt that. Those of us who have watched Carrion’s career in the Bronx Democratic machine were keeping our expectations pretty low.
Carrion was just the wrong guy for this job. Now Obama can pick the right person. This is good news.
Steve in Washington, DC on Tue, May 04, 2010 at 5:28pm
Agree with most of Aaron’s points above. Yes, we shouldn’t expect too much in the first year for an agenda that is not top of the list. And the HUD/EPA/DOT partnership is where a lot of the best stuff is going to happen anyway.
But man, that second paragraph of Aaron’s rings true for me based on the few times I heard him speak in person. I listened intently each time, and I don’t think I could have written down 3 memorable things he said afterward. He was generally uninspiring and didn’t really seem to have a great grasp of either the agenda or what really needs to change, and he certainly couldn’t articulate it in a way to get anyone excited about doing much of anything.
And yes, I think that’s why the “bored” comment really stuck in people’s minds.
Good thoughts, though.
hereinphilly on Wed, May 05, 2010 at 7:21am
Yes there is impatience because it feels like this office has been a long time coming. But two thoughts: I figure that there was a lot of behinds the scenes work we don’t know about, and also, Carrion was starting from scratch. Whoever follows him will have the advantage of not having started from nothing. Obviously Carrion didn’t think he was the right fit for the job either, otherwise he wouldn’t have left.
Chelsea in Washington, DC on Wed, May 05, 2010 at 11:15am
I heartily concur with the comments above. Now, time to stop harping on the departure of Adolfo Carrion and start getting excited about who the replacement may be. I hope (as I’m sure we all do) that it WILL be a visionary who can engage and inspire, who can set the tone for an exciting urban agenda. Having a loud, strong, compelling voice in that position will result in an impact disproportionate to the WHOUA staff and budget size.
I hesitate to be too critical of the level of media attention lavished upon the WHOUA for a few reasons:
(1) The explosion of media outlets reflects the pent-up demand for a federal urban agenda that’s languished since at least Reagan, if not the end of Johnson. Let’s encourage that momentum. The pros outweigh the cons.
(2) And let’s encourage the watchdog function. If the media continues to have high expectations, that will put pressure on the Obama Administration to make sure they do not neglect urban issues in the face of other concerns.
(3) The media can also help to make important connections: the way the federal government approaches urban affairs has a huge impact on economic and environmental concerns. The Administration should be paying extra attention to this small office because of the nature of the broader problems they are dealing with.
(4) Lastly, the WHOUA agenda is also reflected in the HUD-EPA-DOT Sustainable Communities Partnership. Taking the WHOUA and the Partnership as two parts of the same collective whole helps to explain and justify the level of media fervor.
Patrick Lester in Washington, DC on Sun, May 09, 2010 at 9:24am
Not all of the bloggers attacked Carrion. See our entry here:
President, Carrión Deserve Credit
http://unca-acf.org/?p=1179
For an overview of what the office is really doing, go here:
The Real Story on the WH Urban Policy Office
http://unca-acf.org/?p=1337
That blog, Building Neighborhoods, covers federal urban policy, with a focus on President Obama’s Promise Neighborhoods initiative and similar state and local place-based efforts. Building Neighborhoods is a project of United Neighborhood Centers of America.