"Tell us what works in your cities," the president told the gathering of Cities United, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter recalled. "Let us know. Use us. Use us as a resource."
Obama chided some for not submitting their plans for inclusion in the year-old My Brother's Keeper program, which will be buttressed by a new nonprofit alliance the president will tout on Monday in New York. Afterward, Gary, Ind., Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson told her staff, a little guiltily, "We've got to get ours in. The president is asking for our homework."
For six years, Obama, who arguably has stronger ties to American cities than any president since Theodore Roosevelt, has been trying to reorient the way the federal government carries out urban policy.
Gone are the days of federal planners demolishing neighborhoods, driving highways through downtown areas and raining money on big projects. Instead, the Obama administration has been playing the role of coordinator, guiding cities and mayors to tap private money through programs such as My Brother's Keeper and to take the greatest advantage of a steadily dwindling amount of federal money for urban affairs.
In the wake of riots in Baltimore, this approach has come under closer scrutiny. And the report card is mixed. Amid a nationwide urban renaissance, poverty and inequality are dire. Baltimore's worst neighborhoods are as bad as they've ever been, with yawning gaps in life expectancy, high school graduation rates, income, employment, incarceration and housing between them and more affluent areas a short distance away.
Mayors across the country are worried that Baltimore isn't unique and that unrest could spread to their cities. On Tuesday morning last week, several mayors asked to talk to the new attorney general, Loretta Lynch, and by 5 p.m. that day, Lynch's second on the job, she joined a call with more than 50 mayors and elected officials from across the country to discuss law enforcement steps.
"The Obama policies or initiatives labeled urban policy tend to be coordinating efforts," said Bruce Katz, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, who helped the Obama transition in 2009. "I don't want to dismiss or diminish that. Frankly, the federal government has tended to operate in a very compartmentalized way, and solutions to most urban challenges must be integrated and holistic. That's been the Obama mantra and that's been their programmatic focus."
Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said in an interview that "there has been concrete action on the ground" but that Republican resistance has impeded the efforts from spreading more broadly.
"We do know how to address these issues," Jarrett said. "What has been frustrating has been the congressional Republicans' focus on a top-down economic strategy rather than the middle-class economics the president has proposed."
That has left many cities grappling with the politics of lower-class economics. Traditional federal funding, for example, still passes through a variety of bureaucracies. In Baltimore, says Urban Institute expert Erika Poethig, 55 percent of federal money goes through four agencies reporting to different governments — including the State Highway Administration, federal Head Start programs and independent HIV projects. Only one of them, a relatively small $23 million block grant, is under the control of Baltimore's city government.
But Obama administration officials point to signs of improvement when different agencies focus on specific places they have designated Promise Zones: a jump in the Sam Houston High School graduation rate, from 46 percent to 84 percent, in an area of San Antonio singled out for coordinated aid led by the Department of Housing and Urban Development; the installation of new streetlights in Detroit with Energy Department aid; and the role of a White House office called Strong Cities, Strong Communities in overcoming years of gridlock and establishing a regional transportation authority for southeastern Michigan.
Broader initiatives are also important, they say, citing a 33 percent drop in homelessness among veterans, the repair of hurricane and rioting damage in New Orleans, affordable health care, Justice Department work with local police forces, and investments under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Few administrations have had as many senior officials with experience in micro-level urban policy. The president himself was a Chicago community organizer, budget director Shaun Donovan ran the New York City housing department, HUD Secretary Julián Castro led anti-poverty efforts as three-time mayor of San Antonio, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan ran Chicago public schools.
Obama's presidency started out with large ambitions for cities. Though the economic crisis and health-care reform were major distractions, the stimulus bill passed in early 2009 also provided huge amounts of money to cities. And Obama seemed determined to make the most of it, drawing on his experience in Chicago.
"We're going to put an end to throwing money at what doesn't work — and we're going to start investing in what does work and make sure that we're encouraging that," Obama said on July 13, 2009, five months after he established a White House Office of Urban Affairs to lead the charge. "Instead of isolated and monolithic public housing projects that too often trap residents in a cycle of poverty and isolate them further, we want to invest in proven strategies that actually transform communities and enhance opportunity for residents and businesses alike."
But the persistent nature of poverty and tough budget constraints ever since the economic recovery act have tempered expectations.
The new My Brother's Keeper Alliance has raised $500 million in private donations in response to the president's call, but that falls far short of what most urban policy analysts say is needed to make a dent in the ills of inner cities. Moreover, many of the individuals, corporations and foundations contributing to the alliance were already funding similar programs.
When it comes to zeroing in on Promise Zones, the administration only designates five such zones a year, leaving many cities unaltered. And somewhere along the way, the White House Office of Urban Affairs that had been announced with fanfare was quietly folded into the White House Domestic Policy Council.
"This administration has fallen into the trap of those before it, in promising grand ideas and then seeing them diluted or abandoned over time," said Patrick Sharkey, an associate professor of sociology at New York University.
Congress is part of the problem, administration officials say. "Sequestration has fallen hard on everybody, but particularly hard on cities," Donovan said. And the amount of federal money available for cities may soon drop even further.
Obama officials say they can still make a difference. In a September 2013 TED talk, Donovan, then secretary of HUD, said the average child in a neighborhood of concentrated poverty is likely to participate in programs operated by 11 different federal agencies.
"There is no silver bullet for what a poor kid faces growing up in poverty," Donovan said. "If you got the departments of Housing, Education, Transportation and others not working together around that kid's life, you're going to fail."
