ABSTRACT
Public policy, like clothing, has its fashions. Services in kind and in cash alternate in popularity. Top-down and bottom-up policies change in the world of accepted program design. Discretion constantly vies with flexibility for the dominant factor in public policy. The level of government which is to be preferred as the leader in policy moves with bewildering frequency among the federal, state, and local levels. Yesterday’s orthodoxy becomes today’s anathema; today’s accepted wisdom turns into tomorrow’s target of inadequacy. Nowhere are these pendulums more clearly seen than in urban policy. In particular, the role of the federal government is always under scrutiny, if not attack: it is always too weak, or too strong; or too weak and too strong but in the wrong places.
