ABSTRACT
The long expansion of the 1990s has finally begun to draw urban residents into the labor market, the inner cores of our major metropolitan regions continue to be plagued by social problems—;crime; unemployment; concentrated poverty; rotting infrastructure; and poor transportation, health, social services, and schools. Federal funds should be used to build new highways in metropolitan and adjoining areas only in exceptional circumstances and only when linked to the expansion of affordable housing. This makes economic sense on two grounds. First, it compels exurban retail and commercial and residential projects to stand on their own merits. Second, it puts infrastructure money where we know it will have the greatest bounce—;in denser sites of economic activity that will leverage the performance of the surrounding region. Parts of our new urban agenda may be disputed in some quarters; but the larger portion of it is not new, and its desirability is not in dispute.
