|
||||||
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||
 |
||
|
||
Urban Planning, Passed by the Campaign Trail
 Randall Crane, Vice-Chair of Urban Planning at UCLA, contributed a provocative opinion piece to Planetizen, entitled Cities: The Missing Presidential Campaign Issue. Crane also co-author of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Urban Planning, frames his writings on the advice he would give to presumptive Presidential Candidates Obama and McCain. That advice in one word...Cities! Crane makes some interesting points about place making and policy and how the importance of Cities as the agents of change concerning these issues is often overlooked. "Because the downtowns and suburbs of cities, where the supermajority of Americans toil, relax, and puzzleout their lives, are invisible in the 2008 campaign." He goes on to point out that only one candidate, Obama has a statement on urban policy. Agreed, this is an important issue, as the majority of our population now exists within urban areas. And it brings about a lot of questions.....why is rural policy the favorite of presidential campaigns, if the majority of voters reside in urban areas? Has Campaign strategy just not caught up with the population shift from rural to urban? I think not....Perhaps it is the political homogeneity that exists in cities, the majority tend to be Democratic, so possibly this is why the campaign targets those voters that do not consistently vote democratic and associate more with rural lifestyles.  COMMENTS Post a Comment
Archives October 2006 | November 2006 | December 2006 | February 2007 | March 2007 | May 2007 | June 2007 | November 2007 | January 2008 | March 2008 | April 2008 | June 2008 | July 2008 |
|
||
