A Prayer for the City (40 page)

North Philadelphia had been painted red by the HOLC appraisers, meaning it wasn’t worth mortgage investment. In the forty years between 1950 and 1990, North Philadelphia had lost 53 percent of its population; it now had a vacancy rate of 17 percent and contained 11,512 abandoned residential structures. South Philadelphia had been painted the red of obsolescence by the HOLC appraisers. Subsequently, in the forty years between 1950 and 1990, South Philadelphia had lost 45 percent of its population; it now had a vacancy rate of 12 percent and contained 4,185 abandoned residential structures. West Philadelphia had been painted red by the HOLC appraisers. In the forty years between 1950 and 1990, West Philadelphia had lost 33 percent of its population; it now had a vacancy rate of 12 percent and contained 4,118 abandoned structures. Kensington had been painted red by the HOLC appraisers. In the forty years between 1950 and 1990, Kensington had lost 37 percent of its population; it now had a vacancy rate of 10 percent and contained 1,712 abandoned structures. Virtually all the suburbs favored by HOLC, on the other hand, ultimately grew into vibrant and steady residential areas.

Was it fate that had driven these cataclysmic changes? Or were they the result of the prophecies of those federal appraisers, who saw the city as doomed? In the outlines of those two maps, capable of being laid on top of each other like identical twins even though one was old and the other modern, the answer was apparent: by predicting the obsolescence of so much of the city, they had guaranteed it; by promoting the promised land of the suburbs, they had guaranteed it.

In city after city, the changing dynamics of population coupled with a catastrophic loss in the industrial base made urban America more dependent on the federal government than ever before. But in the reality of politics, the reality in which money, public works projects, and certain policies flowed because they meant votes, the influence of cities in the national arena had never counted for less. Cities could deliver votes, but not in the way that had counted in the past, not in the way that had made Roosevelt and Kennedy and Johnson feel something of a political debt to them. Of all the facts that had been written about the 1992 presidential election, the one that was the most startling in what it revealed about the country—and was perhaps focused on the least—was that for the first time ever a majority of the country’s voters lived in the suburbs.

In a piece in
The Atlantic Monthly
in July 1992 entitled “The Suburban Century Begins,” William Schneider wrote that “urban America is facing extreme economic pressure and the loss of political influence. The cities feel neglected, and with good reason: they are the declining sector of American life.”

Schneider’s exhaustive analysis showed that in metropolitan areas around the country the huge margins of urban votes that had swept Democrats into office in the past could now be outmatched by the margins of suburban votes: “The urban base doesn’t have enough votes anymore. The Democrats have to break into the suburbs by proving that they understand something they have never made an effort to understand in the past—namely, the values and priorities of suburban America.”

The clout of America’s cities was little more than a whisper in the rant of retirees and health care providers and failed savings and loans and those who wanted their personal and property taxes lowered. The obsession was with the middle class, the same middle class that had begun to empty out of the cities forty years earlier, thanks in no small measure to the incentives of the federal government. Cities weren’t ignored in the conference rooms and offices of the nation’s lawmakers in Washington. Instead, they were treated with the faint whiff of patronization; the mayors who represented them were patted on the head, promised careful thought on the subject, and then quietly whisked away. The attitude toward cities could be measured in urban policy—more precisely, what urban policy?—and it could be measured in reams of statistical and demographic data showing the mightiness of the suburbs.

For Ed Rendell, it could also be measured in the personal interactions of one day spent in Washington in May 1992. The riots in Los Angeles had occurred less than a month earlier, so there was now an impetus for Rendell and the nation’s other big-city mayors to be there, beyond the usual hat-in-hand begging. The window of opportunity for cities had presumably never been opened wider, for the riots had given proof to the mayors’ repeated warnings that it was only a matter of time before hopelessness and despair resulted in violence and lawlessness. In the reactive responses of Washington, riots were strangely good for cities; it was no accident that enough political support for a Department of Housing and Urban Development, which had been actively discussed and debated since the late 1950s, materialized only after the 1964 riots.

In a round of private meetings on that day in May, Rendell came face-to-face with the men who moved Washington, or who at least tried to move it despite the perpetual gridlock that now defined it—Bradley, Cranston, Dole, Danforth, Durenberger, Kasten, Kerry, Lautenberg, Moynihan, Mitchell. Just as important, he came face-to-face with the men behind the men, the chiefs of staff and deputy chiefs of staff who knew how to drive and push policy. He also came face-to-face with other big-city mayors—Ray Flynn of Boston, David Dinkins of New York, Maynard Jackson of Atlanta, among others. Without the media there to tamp the dialogue into meaningless pabulum, the talk was direct and unadulterated.

Ray Flynn talked about an altercation that had recently taken place at a Boston church in the aftermath of a drive-by shooting. Upset by the killing, nine gang leaders had paid their condolences by interrupting the funeral and stabbing one of the friends of the deceased. Despite a wave of national publicity, the city had remained calm. “We kept the lid on things,” said Flynn, speaking with the humility of relief. “The business community congratulated us. I don’t know how the hell we did it. Just by holding people’s hands every day.” But for how long could Boston escape? For how long could any city escape?

“Cities are beginning to come apart at the seams,” said Flynn. “And it’s not just Los Angeles. It could happen in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia—any city. We don’t want to talk about it, but it’s evident.”

“We use the term
underclass
,” said Jackson of Atlanta. “Under who? Under what? These are Americans digging into the garbage cans of our streets, living in the viaducts of our tunnels. I’m not just trying to get across the reality. I’m trying to get across the urgency. I don’t think we have time
to play around with this one. The issue is not, Can we keep the lid on? The issue is, When will the lid come off?”

“How in the hell can the Congress be talking about twenty-four, twenty-five billion dollars of aid in the Soviet Union and just about every other place in the world while our country is coming apart at the seams?” asked Dinkins.

The shared ground of their rhetoric, coupled with the sympathy of at least some of the senators they encountered, emboldened them. Under the umbrella of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, they agreed to ask for $35 billion in federal aid.

Rendell was hardly silent during the meetings. He too shared the fears of his fellow mayors. But the amount being requested seemed preposterous to him, not because the cities didn’t deserve it but because he knew they would never get it, regardless of the impetus of the L.A. riots. He seemed more inclined to listen to the comments of Senator Bob Dole, who, unlike his colleagues, Democrat or Republican, saw little purpose in being obsequious with men who presided over something that the majority of Americans didn’t care about. Given the nature of Washington politics, said Dole, there was a chance for the cities to get something, but the window was already closing. “We don’t have a very long attention span. In my view, it’s going to have to be done in the next thirty days. Even in the two weeks since L.A., there are already voters saying, ‘What are we doing this for?’ ”

Rendell himself favored the tactics of compromise and conciliation that had worked so well in Philadelphia—not what should happen, but what could happen given the political reality. He advocated something far more modest than what the other mayors were asking for: $4 billion to $5 billion in urban aid, precisely what the Bush administration was giving Russia, and an extensive program of urban enterprise zones. The amount wasn’t plucked from the air but contained a clever bit of political blackmail: if President Bush wasn’t willing to give such aid to cities, then the message was clear that he cared more about Soviet citizens than he did about the citizens of his own country. “The hardest thing to understand is that we’re not Washington bashers,” said Rendell to Dole’s deputy chief of staff, Jim Wittinghill, in the privacy of Dole’s Senate office. “The frustration out there and the hopelessness out there is enormous. Of all the emotions out there, lack of hope is the most tantamount. If we don’t do something about that, cities are going to burn.

“Everyone tells us there’s no money. For S and Ls, we find money. For Russia, we find money. For space stations, we find money. It’s very hard for us to hear there’s no money.”

Aware of how the suburban middle class ruled, he then posed the problem in a startlingly blunt way. “Even if you say, ‘Screw the cities,’ then you’re going to have to pay a ton of police to encircle us and keep us in.”

Jim Dyer, the president’s deputy assistant for legislative affairs, sounded encouraging when he met with Rendell later that day. “I think there’s a consensus between liberals and conservatives that we really ought to be trying to do something here.” He actually seemed sympathetic to the plight of the cities, although the bookshelf of the office he was in, which included such notable titles as
The Homosexual Network
and
Abortion Providers
, made the moment seem slightly hollow.

Several weeks later Congress and the president did come to an agreement on an urban-aid package. It wasn’t the $35 billion that the U.S. Conference of Mayors believed was necessary, nor was it the far more modest $4 billion to $5 billion advocated by Rendell. It was $1 billion, the majority of which would go to Los Angeles for riot relief and to Chicago for relief from a downtown flood. A $5 billion urban-aid package was then passed by the House over the summer, this one containing fifty enterprise zones. The amount to be spent was to be spread over six years. But as a compromise, only twenty-five of the enterprise zones would actually be in urban areas; the rest would be in rural ones. The bill, said
The New York Times
in an editorial, “spreads money too thinly, in an obvious attempt to buy support.” But it didn’t matter. Shortly after his loss to Clinton, Bush vetoed the bill.

As America’s newest president, Clinton might be different, or he might not be. Rendell was enormously fond of him personally, and the president at least talked about cities as if they had a place somewhere in American society. But Clinton was still subject to the rigors of a Congress focused on the suburban middle class, and although he seemed inclined to test the theory of enterprise zones in a way that was bold and might actually accomplish something, there was no national mandate for a far-reaching urban policy. Cities were not rioting, despite Maynard Jackson’s prediction. Their neighborhoods were just continuing to fall apart, the schism between the poor who lived in the cities and the wealthy who lived in the hidden fringes, in palatial hills and gated communities, wider than ever. What a mayor could gain for his city, if he or she could gain anything,
seemed largely dependent on the rapport established with the president. Appeals and fiery, impassioned rhetoric about America’s moral imperative to save its cities seemed out of touch. To the contrary, the history of federal policy, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society days of the middle 1960s, had proved that America felt no such moral imperative whatsoever. The best a mayor could hope for were stopgaps to staunch the bleeding every now and then—a conversation with the president not about saving the city, but about saving something within it.

At the end of June 1993, a month after Rendell made his pitch to the president to save those ten thousand defense jobs, the mayor gathered with a hundred politicians, workers, and reporters around an eighteen-inch television set in the City Hall Reception Room. They were there to witness live on C-SPAN the Base Closure and Realignment Commission’s decision on the fate of those jobs, and it was an eerie moment, reminiscent of the one when the commission had decided to eliminate more than seventy-five hundred jobs at the navy yard.

The commission voted, and as had been the case in the fate of the navy yard, the decisions handed down were unanimous:

Naval Aviation Supply Office—2,416 jobs: to remain open.

Defense Industrial Supply Center—1,872 jobs: to remain open.

Naval Air Technical Services Facility—200 jobs: to remain open.

Defense Personnel Support Center—3,956 jobs: to remain open.

Not all 10,000 jobs had been saved, but 8,444 had been, and every politician and every worker who had gathered around that television set knew whom to thank: the mayor of the city, grinning from ear to ear. He had no direct proof, but he was convinced that his pitch to the president had made a significant difference in the outcome of the decision.

In a series of wonderful crescendos, it was yet another wonderful crescendo, another defying of the odds, and in the back of his mind, Ed Rendell wondered whether maybe, just maybe, there
was
a chance for something stunning and everlasting.
Fuck
the federal government.
Fuck
those bureaucrats whose contempt for cities could barely be concealed by the smarmy glint of their smiles.
Fuck
those senators whose idea of urban hardship was a lumpy pillow at the Four Seasons. He and his city would do it alone, if only they got just the slightest push of help every now and then, if only there wasn’t some issue they could not control, if only confetti would fall from the sky forever.