|
Obama, first urban
president since 1881
Along
East 53rd's sidewalks bustling with well-dressed families both black
and white, he found a neighborhood perfectly befitting a bi-racial Ivy
League man
Friday 23 January 2009
Dallas Hansen, National Post
Upon leaving office, George W. Bush returned to the seclusion of his
1,600-acre ranch 20 minutes out of tiny Crawford, Tex. — itself
two-and-a-half hours from Dallas-Forth Worth. Bill Clinton came to the
White House via the Arkansas Governor’s mansion and exited into a
modest 11-room Neo-Dutch Colonial in exurban Chappaqua, N.Y. — an
hour’s drive from Manhattan. Ronald Regan lived in Bel-Air (the Los
Angeles suburb made famous by the Fresh Prince), Jimmy Carter on his
peanut farm in Georgia, Gerald Ford in Virginia’s wealthy Alexandria,
LBJ in the Houston sticks. Even JFK, who spent two boyhood years in the
Bronx and enough time in Boston, made his primary home at the six-acre
Kennedy Compound in small-town Hyannis, Mass.
So
vast has been the succession of country and suburban gentlemen to the
Executive chair that finding an urban president — a man who lived and
worked primarily within the core of one of America’s great metropolises
— requires looking back to 1881, when, following James Garfield’s
assassination, the nation’s highest office fell to vice-president
Chester A. Arthur, a lawyer and civil servant who before and after the
White House lived and worked in Manhattan.
In
1984, a 23-year-old Barack Obama, freshly graduated from Columbia,
vacated his Manhattan apartment to accept directorship of the
Developing Communities Project, a non-profit in South Side Chicago.
Here, along East 53rd’s sidewalks bustling with well-dressed families
both black and white, Obama found a neighbourhood perfectly befitting a
bi-racial Ivy League man: Hyde Park.
It’s
a salt-and-pepper, middle-class mix, an educated enclave encrusted with
architectural gems, bordered by Washington Park to the west, the
splendid University of Chicago to the south and to the north, wealthy
Kenwood, where Obama’s mansion lies a quarter block north of tree-lined
Hyde Park Boulevard.
Hyde
Park is the American Dream manifested — a model of integration and an
oasis of prosperous civility in a South Side desert that saw much of
its housing stock razed in the 1960s and 70s as landlords walked away
from their properties. Incredibly, for the first time in 127 years, we
have a president whose primary residence sits where he can walk just
minutes to shop for groceries, dine at dozens of restaurants, visit a
museum or take a dance lesson. Unless he’s leaving the neighbourhood,
Obama can leave his Ford Explorer Hybrid parked at home. Or he can get
downtown in minutes via the 6 Jackson Park Express or by hopping on the
Metra commuter train. At least he could’ve until the mandatory
motorcades.
“Our
communities will better serve all of their residents if we are able to
leave our cars to walk, bicycle and access other transportation
alternatives,” said Obama’s Office of the President-Elect Web site,
change.gov, before his confirmation. “As president, Barack Obama will
re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart
growth considerations are taken into account ....”
Coming
from Obama, these words actually carry weight. Indeed, the Web site
included an entire page devoted to Urban Policy with a promise to
create a “Director of Urban Policy [who] will report directly to the
president and co-ordinate all federal urban programs.” Other big ideas:
a $7,000 federal tax credit for new hybrid vehicle purchases, and a
goal of one million plug-in hybrid cars on America’s roads by 2015. And
knowing that Chicago’s elevated train system is what has kept the
city’s centre strong, look for Obama’s planned National Infrastructure
Reinvestment Bank to invest big-time in mass transit with new lines,
extensions to existing lines and brand new light-rail train systems
being rolled out.
Even
with oil less expensive than it was months ago, the first casualty of
many home budgets in any downcycle will be the vehicle — expensive to
maintain and largely unnecessary in the presence of good-quality
transit. Rather than being catastrophic, a large-scale relinquishing of
automobile ownership will add value to neighbourhoods that, like Hyde
Park, enjoy 24-hour transit service and a walkable scale.
Hyde
Park represents the sort of “regional innovation cluster” Obama’s Urban
Policy seeks to promote. If his home neighbourhood has helped shape his
vision for city neighbourhoods throughout America, we might indeed be
in for an urban renaissance that outdoes even the last decade.
|
|
|
|
