Rethinking Cities

The American city is commonly portrayed as hovering on the brink of decay and disaster. Is this picture overdrawn? Indeed it is, according to a recently published book, The Unheavenly City, that has found favor with the Nixon Administration and has aroused considerable controversy among academicians. Combining a ruthless logic of argument with an engaging tolerance of tone, Edward Banfield, 53, professor of urban government at Harvard, contends that many urban problems are largely imaginary. In fact, says Banfield, the cities are performing better than ever.

To arrive at such a heretical position, Banfield discounts the opinions of many big-city dwellers, from the poor to the mayors. As he sees it, people complain too much. Cities have problems, but they vary in importance. Thus he views traffic congestion as part of the price of living in a vital city; such discomforts can be tolerated, if not enjoyed. Indeed, the city environment is not necessarily the most important aspect of a city. "One has only to read Machiavelli's history of Florence," writes Banfield, "to see that living in a beautiful city is not in itself enough to bring out the best in one. So far as their humanity is concerned, the people of, say, Jersey City compare very favorably to the Florentines of the era of that city's greatest glory."

Inexorable Progress. Banfield believes that American cities are turning out a relatively humane citizenry -and an increasingly wealthier one. It has been the traditional function of the city, in fact, to attract the rural poor, both from the U.S. and abroad, and to provide them with better jobs and a better life. This process is not always apparent; often it is accompanied by what seems to be an upsurge in human misery, as the poor crowd into low-cost housing in the center of the city. But inexorably, they move up the social scale and out into more pleasant surroundings on the city's periphery. This includes blacks, who -says Banfield -are moving up and out just as rapidly as past immigrant groups.

Banfield concedes that 15% to 20% of ghetto blacks do not seem to make any progress and remain mired in poverty and malaise. But he argues that the city is not to blame. These unfortunates constitute what he calls the lower class, and they remain fairly impervious to any sort of assistance. Departing radically from conventional analysis, Banfield maintains that their plight lies, essentially, neither in discrimination nor lack of income, but in their class outlook: they are rigidly present-minded and they do not want to postpone immediate pleasure in order to secure some future gain. In this respect, they are no different from lowerclass whites, who show the same behavior patterns: a tendency to violence, a dislike of steady work, an inability to maintain a stable family. Even if all blacks in America turned white overnight, contends Banfield, their problems would not change much because they are basically problems of class.

To discount the importance of race to this extent seems to defy common sense, not to mention the feelings of the black community. Banfield seems on more solid ground when he attacks other long-held liberal views. He argues, for example, that Government programs have failed to do much for the urban poor. Urban renewal threw them out of their homes; antipoverty funds were wasted on useless projects. In Banfield's view, the trouble is that those who yearn to help the poor often do so more to make themselves feel good than to do good for others. They contribute moral fervor to programs only half thought out; when these programs collapse, they are too busy doing something else to notice. Today, he complains, "doing good is becoming a growth industry, like the other forms of mass entertainment."

Altruism and Racism. By denouncing whites for racism, suggests Banfield, the altruists merely reinforce black-white conflict. "It is bad enough to suffer real prejudice, as every Negro does, without having to suffer imaginary prejudice as well. Driving it into him that he is the victim of the white man's hate and greed makes it all the more difficult for him to feel that he is a man first and a Negro second."

The programs offered by the altruists are highly dubious too, according to Banfield. Large-scale employment programs are self-defeating because they draw more of the rural poor to the cities and thus do not cut urban unemployment. More schooling is no palliative, because most lower-class kids do not respond to formal training and simply grow more frustrated in a society that confines them to desks when they could be leading more exciting lives. Banfield would allow them to quit school after the ninth grade and work as truck drivers, longshoremen or lumberjacks. He would increase such jobs -and decrease racial discrimination by unions -by repealing the minimum wage and occupational licensing laws as well as laws that enable unions to exercise monopolistic powers.

Banfield also accuses the altruists of being permissive toward crime. He sees this as a new form of white racism, since blacks are the main victims of violent urban crime. It is imperative that those blacks capable of making progress -the working and middle classes -be separated from the ghettos. To spare these people from ghetto crime, Banfield would resort to some draconian measures, including preventive detention of those deemed likely to commit violent crime.

But Banfield puts less faith in any reforms than in the functioning of the city and its economy. Barring any unexpected upsurge in immigration of the unskilled, he anticipates an elimination of all urban poverty by the year 2000. This will be accomplished by economic growth and an eventual decline in the percentage of the youthful poor who require the bulk of the services and cause most of the trouble in the cities. These changes, says Banfield, will do more than even the most massive federal programs to keep the city a fit place to live.

Such a ringing defense of the urban environment can be cheered by those who have long suffered the ills of the city -or think they have. Yet disquieting questions remain. Has Banfield quite grasped the tumult of feelings involved in being black? He may have underestimated the less obvious, lingering forms of discrimination that are so galling to blacks precisely because they are often too subtle to combat. If it is true that many federal programs have failed to make a dent in the city's poverty, this does not mean that others should not be tried; public housing, for example, remains a requirement for the poor at a time when not much other housing is available.

A New Laissez-Faire. Banfield has commendably deflated a certain amount of hysteria on the subject of the cities; he has shown that apocalypse does not lurk around the corner. But his scarcely disguised contempt for liberal prescriptions and his skepticism about the possibilities of reform have offended some of his fellow urbanologists who charge that he wants to return to a policy of laissez-faire. Yet his book is an honest, probing attack on a subject that is too often encumbered with tired cliches and rigidities of thought. If nothing else, Banfield has shown that there are other approaches to a consideration of the embattled city. Says James Q. Wilson, professor of government at Harvard: "Whether you agree with it or not, it is now the only serious intellectual book that has been written about urban problems."

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