I have to commend this post, Advocating for Urbanism and Ryan’s commentary, but I would like to make a tangential point brought forth from the second paragraph:

There is a certain vogue gathering around urban issues. No — not inner-city poverty, crime, or joblessness — but, rather, those issues that might broadly be described as ones of “human geography.” Where do people live, where do they work, and how should they travel between the two? How can resources, ranging from good schools to public transit to clean air, be more fairly allocated within regions?
Such questions have long been the provenance of a small group of left planning theorists such as James Howard Kunstler and Jane Jacobs. Their calls for denser, urban development were motivated as much by aesthetic concerns as by economic and environmental ones. And while it’s certainly true that strip malls and parking lots are eyesores, and that old buildings are often prettier than new ones, critics weren’t totally off the mark when they accused these thinkers of snobbishness; of a certain lack of compassion for the typical postwar middle-class family, lured by cheap real estate and good schools into a vastly expanding suburbia.

While I love Brooklyn, and New York in general, not everyone wishes or could live in the type of urban environment New Yorkers endure. I think it is very limiting to merely think of urban issues as issues only pertaining to Los Angeles or New York. Part of the job of whomever leads the President-elect’s future Office for Urban Policy, will be pursuing policies which respond to urban issues on many different scales and regions. Additionally, the Chair will have to cheerlead and make clear that urban doesn’t mean Brooklyn or Boston, but rather Cleveland and Chattanooga. The Chair must make clear to America that if they can throw a football (or baseball or stone) at a neighbor’s house, you live in an Urban environment. Enlarging the definition of Urbanity will be essential to saving the urban cores of America.