Progressives have been proposing the same agenda since Teddy Roosevelt (in the early 1900′s). Case and point, an excerpt of LBJ’s great society speech at the University Of Michigan in 1964 (emphasis added):
Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now, when there will be 400 million Americans — four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this century urban population will double, city land will double, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facilities equal to all those built since this country was first settled. So in the next 40 years we must re-build the entire urban United States.
Aristotle said: “Men come together in cities in order to live, but they remain together in order to live the good life.” It is harder and harder to live the good life in American cities today.
The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated.
Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and time honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.
46 years later BHO (Obama) speaking to a group of City Mayors:
… and we expect you to use it. Already, we’ve met with you and the Conference of Mayors over a half-a-dozen times. Too often in the past, America’s cities have been neglected and our mayors haven’t had — haven’t been able to be heard on the questions of national policy. That’s a story you all understand and know very well.
But we know how important cities are. Sixty-five percent of our nation’s population, as you all know, live in our cities. Our cities are the home of 7 out of 10 American jobs. And when you’re talking about the knowledge economy jobs, the number rises to 8 in 10, 8 out of 10.
Cities are vital to our economy, essential to our recovery, and haven’t been paid much attention to. Our economy can never reach, in our view, its full potential if we have people who are living blocks away, but worlds away from the bustling downtowns full of opportunity.
Our poor transportation system don’t provide mobility when people need to get to the job or — or there aren’t enough police or firefighters in the communities to keep the communities safe.
And that’s why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act President Obama signed this week, I think, includes unprecedented investment in American cities.
(APPLAUSE)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
