The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; California Urban Strategy

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Sometime around the end of this month President Carter is expected to unveil his urban policy -- what the federal government will do to stop American cities from further decay. Producing that policy has reportedly caused a lot of pushing and shoving within the administration. In the meantime, states have been coming up with urban plans of their own. Massachusetts was first with a widely admired scheme; then last month California produced its own. Tonight, with a particular look at California, what can Jimmy Carter learn from the states? Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the California plan touches on everything from street crime to sewers, everything that`s involved in living or making a living in an urban area. The plan contains forty-five major points, but the essence is simply this: to redirect existing state programs, laws and regulations, as well as all new ones, toward stopping the urban sprawl that is California. Using tax breaks, economic incentives, regulatory help and other means, the push will be on revitalizing and rebuilding what`s already there -- the decaying inner cities; and then, though improved public transportation, law enforcement and other services, make it attractive for people and industry to stay put or resettle there, as the case may be. Growth will be controlled, farmland will be protected, planning will be on a regional rather than a local basis. Robin?

MacNEIL: California Governor Jerry Brown is up for re-election this year. He surprised some students of the unconventional Brown style of government with this urban plan. Normally Governor Brown scorns multi-part government programs. The Governor is with us this evening in his office in Sacramento. Governor, some cynics back East believe you announced your plan to upstage Jimmy Carter`s. How should we treat speculation like that?

Gov. EDMUND G. BROWN: Like similar speculation of that order. This urban strategy, the document of which I have in my hand, is the format for our urban and suburban action in the state. It started about two years ago; it`s gone through a tremendous process of refinement with developers, environmentalists, labor unions, local government, state government planners. And through a crucible of discussion, meetings throughout the state, hundreds of letters, dialectical give-and-take, we`ve come up with a strategy to maintain our existing urban areas and preserve and enhance the way we use land in California. And I think that that is just the very essence of what we`re trying to do in California with respect to our urban space; and to try to link that with politics is really a truism because everything done in an election year will be related to that. But this is something that will go on for a long time and would have emerged without an election in this year.

MacNEIL: Since you`re not a man who normally likes, as I said a moment ago, plans with many parts for government programs, why this time. and on this policy?

BROWN: Because I was convinced, after a good deal of reflection and thought, that we do need an overall thrust and direction for the state of California with respect to maintaining our existing neighborhoods and making sure that new development is compatible with our quality of life. I am very wary of the overall plan, because it often freezes the conventional wisdom of today in a very fluid situation, and this plan overcomes that objective by having a great deal of flexibility, looking to local expression and control and yet providing a state leadership and thrust. My view of evolutionary activity in growth and life itself is that it has many variables, that the future is often unpredictable; and so this plan is really a process, it`s a program where people, living people, come together to work out this rehabilitation and renaissance of urban space. And I would not like to lock up a few planning concepts but would rather direct people`s intention to higher density in the urban areas, preservation of agricultural land, and stressing this cooperation between state government, local government and so everything phases together with the private sector. It is not a hard-programmed policy, but rather a very fluid and flexible set of ideas with one overriding idea: care for what we have, manage it wisely as we introduce new areas of growth into our very dynamic system in California.

MacNEIL: How precisely, Governor, are you going to be able to get developers, who want to make money developing things, to do it within the confines of existing urban or built-up areas and not constantly eating up new farmland in urban sprawl? How are you actually going to force them to do that?

BROWN: Well, it`s not just the developers that provide resistance, but it`s local communities that do not want density and view it as a downward social mobility and an alteration of their neighborhoods in a negative direction. I believe that we`re turning that around, that the older cities are coming back, and that government ought to help by making surplus land available, by locating state buildings in areas that we wish to revitalize, by taking certain risks in our government sector activities, regulatory direction of putting in water grants and other programs, tax incentives for older buildings to be rehabilitated. We are giving the encouragement to revitalize the older cities and suburbs. And so the developers will build where the space is available. It is now up to the people and state and local government to make that space a reality. The regulatory resistance that developers are finding in agricultural land and environmentally sensitive areas is providing a very strong incentive to go back to the city, to look at those areas that have been leapfrogged over. And in this state, given our growth, we are going to have new towns, we are going to have suburban development; and what we want to do is to try to maintain and enhance the urban center and then to make sure that what we have is cared for, is preserved and even improved while we then allow appropriate development at the fringes to go forward. And I think the developers want that. What they want is a clear signal, and they haven`t had that in the past. This urban strategy, which we`re sending out to every local government, becomes the basis for a political debate, not only this year but over a decade; and given the reduction in the size of the family, the younger professionals moving back into the city, the older people that want smaller apartments and homes, I think you`re going to see townhouses, condominiums and more moderate priced housing as community attitudes recognize the value and the quality of a higher density community.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you, Governor. We`ll be back. Jim?

LEHRER: As you said earlier, Robin, Massachusetts is another state that is already well into the business of trying to save its urban centers. Under the direction of Governor Michael Dukakis the Massachusetts urban plan is being implemented by the state`s Director of Planning, Frank Keefe. Mr. Keefe, what are the main points of the Massachusetts plan?

FRANK KEEFE: Well...

LEHRER: In thirty words or less, right. (Laughing.)

KEEFE: (Laughing.) Well, it`s strikingly similar to the proposal in California, which is certainly not a criticism; I think it`s important to be right as well as original, especially when it comes to something so important as urban policy. I think there are two differences between California and the Massachusetts strategy, and one is the way in which we went about putting it together. Governor Dukakis, when he came into office in 1975, decided that we ought to act quickly and aggressively to put together an urban strategy, and so consequently he created an Office of State Planning, he created a development cabinet and asked us to look vigorously at all state programs to see how they could be substantially amended such that they could reinforce existing urban centers in Massachusetts rather than what they had been doing up till then, which is subsidizing sprawl.

Secondly, I think the difference between the California strategy and our own is a question of emphasis on centers. In my reading of what we`ve been doing and what California is doing, we seem to place a tremendous amount of importance on the continued vitality of not only the traditional large city centers but also neighborhood centers and small commercial centers.

LEHRER: In smaller cities as well.

KEEFE: That`s right, exactly. We think our urban policy in Massachusetts is either going to make it or be broken in the middle-sized cities in Massachusetts, the old mill towns of Lawrence and Lowell and Bedford and Fall River.

LEHRER: All right. You`ve already had some experience with the plan and the Governor has already had to make some tough decisions. Can you give me an example of something that has happened that would not have happened had this urban plan not been in effect?

KEEFE: Well, there are lots of examples because we have been busily implementing the policy over the last three years, but perhaps the best example from my own point of view is the city where I did a lot of work before joining the Governor`s staff, and that is the city of Lowell. Five years ago that city just didn`t have a future. It was perhaps the prototypical mill city that had lost its industrial base and was perhaps the best example of blight in the Northeast. But Lowell today I think is in a much better position, it has succeeded in attracting thirty new industrial firms through a sensitive combination of state programs consistent with a local revitalization program that has dramatically transformed that community.

LEHRER: What did the state contribute to the effort?

KEEFE: Well, the state had to basically change its thinking on a lot of state programs. Number one, we put the first urban state park in the state`s history in downtown Lowell, based upon the canal system and some of the mill buildings. The state took its public housing programs and put public housing in old, abandoned mill buildings. There are two examples of that already. The state took its highway program and instead of building a big, major connector through two neighborhoods in the city, it adapted those highway programs to make existing roadways work better and at the same time plant trees and brick sidewalks and add those other environmental amenities which make an urban place nicer.

LEHRER: There`s another example. Just to capsule it very quickly, it`s a dispute over where to build a new shopping center in the Berkshire areas of Massachusetts. In the old town of Pittsfield they wanted it downtown, but another group wanted to build it in a suburb of Lenox, and the Governor said no to Lenox and yes to Pittsfield, is that right?

KEEFE: It was a clear example where you had to make an either/or choice. Either the one regional shopping center in the Berkshires was to be in downtown Pittsfield or it would go to an outlying peripheral area. And the Governor decided that, consistent with local policies and regional policies and his own strong commitment to downtown areas, we would do everything possible to prevent that development from occurring out in a peripheral area and to make it happen in downtown Pittsfield. It`s perhaps the best example of how a governor has got to make hard choices, sometimes politically risky choices, to make an urban policy happen.

LEHRER: And that of course opened up the whole question of local home rule, and I want to get to that in just a moment. Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Well, we`ve heard of the policies of two states. Now let`s see how these relate to the policy that seems to be emerging in Washington. Neal Peirce is a syndicated columnist who`s specialized in covering

state and urban affairs. Now with the National Journal, Mr. Peirce is the author of a widely acclaimed series of books, People, Power and Politics, dealing with regional governments and the states. Neal, when do we get a Carter plan?

NEAL PEIRCE: The last I heard, we get it next Monday, the twenty-seventh.

MacNEIL: How likely is it to relate to these in some ways similar schemes that we`ve just been hearing about?

PEIRCE: It`s almost certain to include a state element, and the federal government will approach that by some series of incentive grants to states to form their own urban strategies that would be along the lines of what you heard from Massachusetts and California. The problem is that states have immense power, they have been mostly criminally negligent towards their cities over most of our history, and especially in the last decades; we have had in the last year the first flickerings of hope, if you will, in terms of broad-scale strategies to do something for the cities. We have a very exclusive club, Massachusetts and California; and Minnesota has a plan it`s been working on in effect for some years through its aid to the Twin Cities; Michigan has a new plan; Maryland and some other states have elements. But it`s a small club, and the point is, how can the federal government induce more states to go the same way? So they`re planning some incentive grants for those that would do this.

MacNEIL: Does the Carter administration approve of the way states like California and Massachusetts have been going? Is that the direction they`d like to give them incentives to move in?

PEIRCE: I think most definitely. And they will be asking them to either target investments more towards places in need, especially center cities or rural areas in real need, or to be changing their official regulatory and tax policies, annexation laws, and so on so as to relieve real areas of need, especially in the center cities.

MacNEIL: I see. So the burden of the federal government`s complaint will be that it`s not just the federal government policies over all these years since the Second World War which have been discouraging development of the cities and encouraging the suburbs, but also state governments have contributed to that -- in other words, would share the blame.

PEIRCE: Yes; the federal government will be acknowledging that, really, officially I suppose for the first time, that many of its policies have led to the plight of the cities. The governors have been coming to them this past several months and saying, "Look, our policies have been doing just as much harm, therefore you have to get us on board, give us some incentive grants." But the governors have made the real admission, which I think is a correct one, that they are equally guilty, the state governments are, of what`s happened to the major cities, and if there`s going to be a curative process in the country the states must be involved or you only have half a loaf of a policy.

MacNEIL: Now, in the early talk of the Carter plan, and not discouraged by some of his own people, there was talk of something the equivalent of a massive Marshall plan for the cities, which supposed a huge amount of money pouring in and the idea of those big programs of the sixties. If it is not going to be that, what is it going to be in terms of money, and how is that money going to be used specifically to encourage the states to do what the federal government thinks they should?

PEIRCE: I suppose that the money will be argued out to the last moment, but President Carter made it clear in a meeting with his aides in December that he was not going to stand for a large multi-billion-dollar increase in the budget. I suppose we might see two or four billion dollars extra, but nothing compared to the massive increase in aid to the center cities which has taken place through special public works grants, employment programs, countercyclical aid -- a whole range of programs in the last years, especially since about 1974 or `75; some people now talk about these big cities having become federal fiscal junkies. Well, the realization is there in Washington. First of all, they can`t afford a great deal more money with the federal budget running as high as it is in deficit; and they`re not sure that a lot more money would do any good. And therefore they`re looking for new ways that they can help the cities without spending more money. And a state strategy being proposed by the governors and lobbied over the last several months fits in beautifully to that strategy.

MacNEIL: I see. Well, we`ll come back. Jim?

LEHRER: Governor Brown, do you agree that plans like California`s and the plan in Massachusetts that Mr. Keefe talked about can be accomplished without great inputs of federal money?

BROWN: I think it`s going to take some more money. I would see that the unemployment among young people is particularly acute, and in our own state I see tremendous immigration coming from other parts of the country of people that have skills and take the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are created each year. That leaves a residue of unskilled young people living in the inner cities, and that will take some kind of a program. We have the California Conservation Corps; it is a very modest program, but if the President could expand on that with an Urban Corps, expanding VISTA, the Peace Corps as well as a CCC-type program, that could be the basis for the development of skills, and I think that is going to take money along with directing federal buildings and tax incentives toward the center cities. So that human element is going to take investment along with encouraging the states to direct their efforts at revitalization instead of sprawl.

LEHRER: Governor, another point that Neal Peirce made: are you one of the governors who feels that the states are as much to blame for what`s happened to the urban centers of this country as the federal government or local government?

BROWN: I would think it`s really a part of the culture itself. The path of least resistance was sprawl, and the sense of the American dream of upward mobility was out of the inner city. And as the poor people came into town, those who were on the upward curve of prosperity moved out. And that was a logical strategy until we reached a point of diminishing returns, where we are now. And I do see that return to the city, that rebuilding of what we have, and a sense that the throwaway ethic, the obsolescent economy has to give way to an economy of care, of conservation and of preserving what we have. So certainly the states have been a part, along with the cities, the federal government, but really the underlying cowboy ethic of the last 200 years. And we`re talking now about a shift in values and consciousness, and certainly the states should join with the other elements in that process.

LEHRER: Governor, one other question that I`m sure you probably figured was coming. We heard from Mr. Keefe what Governor Dukakis had to do in terms of the Lenox-Pittsfield situation in the Berkshire area of Massachusetts. Under the California plan is the Governor of California, whether he be Jerry Brown or anybody else, going to have to make those same kinds of tough decisions, and are you willing to do it?

BROWN: Well, there are some tough decisions on freeways, on the placing of public buildings. Here in Sacramento we`re trying to bring people back into the inner part of the city alongside of the capitol.

I vetoed a bill recently that would have mandated a freeway acquisition out into the suburbs, on the grounds that our state transportation commission should evaluate the merits of that program in light of the urban strategy and other transportation priorities. We`re going to have some tough decisions throughout the next decade.

KEEFE: That`s true.

LEHRER: Mr. Keefe, let me ask you, also to the point that Neal Peirce made about other states and the role the federal government apparently is going to play in trying to get them to do what you and other states like California have done. Unless these other states adopt these policies similar to yours, isn`t Massachusetts, and then California and other states that do, going to be in a position where business and industry is just going to locate in other areas where it`s freer and you don`t have these kinds of restraints on them?

KEEFE: Well, I don`t think so. The National Governors` Association, in putting together the proposal, urged strongly that this not be a demonstration program for five or ten states, that after a phase-in period of let`s say three or four years you would mandate that every state put together a state growth strategy, which would be suited to the special needs and special concerns of individual states. And so consequently, hopefully there would be uniformity across the country within four years` time.

LEHRER: But let`s say a state close to Massachusetts makes the decision, in their own wisdom, to allow shopping centers to build up in a sprawl basis, or whatever you want to say. I mean, there you`ve had it, right? That`s where they`re going to go. In fact, the developers in the Lenox thing say they might go to Vermont in this particular case.

KEEFE: Well, that`s hard to conceive of, since in the case of shopping centers they`re pretty much tied to their local market; and so consequently what we`re proposing is that states get their act together and they begin to make the public investments that they directly control and that they administer for the federal government to work in the direction of reinforcing existing centers -- with private investment; that`s the whole point. Right now those public funds are going to subsidize sprawl. And it`s just a question of changing the rules of the game and for the first time making the rules clear to the private market; and with lots of other factors like the energy crisis influencing the private market, we think there`s going to be a major shift in private sector interest in the traditional developed areas in Massachusetts.

BROWN: I have one point, if I might.

MacNEIL: Yes, Governor.

BROWN: And that is, this is not just some arbitrary imposition from government or a piece of paper that is very nice in this booklet, but rather it`s a shift in the cultural thrust of this country. We have experienced an explosion out of the cities; we`re now beginning to see an implosion. And as we resolve our human relations problem, as we learn to integrate, as we learn to live with the aged and the young and the blacks and the whites and the Anglos and the Hispanics, we are seeing a greater attractiveness of the cities themselves. And I believe that this urban strategy is really a manifestation of a shift in thinking because we have reached a point of diminishing returns in the explosion outward; and that, turning back into the cities, is a cultural, economic, environmental, demographic fact of life that is just now emerging. And so we`re really in harmony with a curve that will be clearer throughout the rest of the next decade.

MacNEIL: Neal Peirce, from your knowledge of both the federal planning and of the many states, have we begun that implosion, as the Governor calls it, or is that still just a wishful gleam in the eyes of federal and state officials?

PEIRCE: Well, there are a lot of federal officials who are going to wait until it`s a well-established fact before they`ll confess it. But we do have a significant movement, if not of people moving into the city, of children deciding to stay in the city instead of buying their home in the suburbs, which in many cases they can`t afford now. There is an atmosphere and a spirit of growth in many of the older cities of the nation. There are still some where you feel extremely depressed when you talk with all. the community leaders. It may be years before we can prove exactly how fast this revival is occurring, but I think the Governor is correct in saying that there is a revival going on in the cities, and it also matches a lifestyle preference where the suburban dream is not as much a dream for some people as it was before; all it takes is a certain minority to say "We like city living and what it offers" to add some new life economically and` socially to the cities.

MacNEIL: And many strands contributing to that, like women`s lib and other things.

PEIRCE: Yes.

MacNEIL: Governor, let`s just close on going back to the federal policy. How would you feel if Mr. Carter`s policy, when announced next week, did announce actual not only financial incentives but financial penalties for states who didn`t do quite what the federal government wanted them to do? Do you think that`s a good thing, to put teeth in the federal policy?

BROWN: I think there ought to be teeth in it. We`re following the path that is likely to be the occasion for incentives rather than disincentives. Just as a matter of prediction, I would think that it is much harder to take away state revenue-sharing as a penalty rather than offer a carrot in the form of additional assistance, and that`ll probably be the way that the President will have to go.

MacNEIL: Is that the way you understand it--not many sticks, but more carrots?

PEIRCE: Yes. They were talking about taking away revenue-sharing and they`re backing down on that now. But they are changing the governors` own plans and wishes to some extent. It looks as if the incentive money will be less than what the governors want, and it also looks as if the federal government may insist that the states, when they present these growth strategies, also show that they`ve cooperated with the mayors and local officials in their state and have their endorsement, the idea being that some of the White House officials fear that otherwise this could become a grab bag of fiscal goodies or powers for the governors.

MacNEIL: Mr. Keefe, how does Massachusetts look at the emerging federal plan? Is there anything that you`re worried about in advance, or do you think it`s going to be pretty well in harmony with what you...

KEEFE: Well, Governor Dukakis spearheaded the National Governors` Association task force that made the original proposal, and I think he`s very pleased with the developments in the White House. We would be concerned, however, to see only a small amount of incentive money being put into this new program because we think that President Carter can purchase more in terms of impact by this governors` incentive grant proposal than any other proposal that could possibly be included in this national urban policy announcement. After all, you`re talking about billions and billions of dollars in public facility investments that have previously gone to subsidizing sprawl, and for the first time President Carter has a chance to -- together with the states -- redirect those funds to reinforce existing urban centers. Now, that`s dramatic.

MacNEIL: Thank you very much, Mr. Keefe, we have to leave it there. Thank you, Governor Brown in Sacramento, for joining us. Thanks, Mr. Keefe. Good night. Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Thanks, Neal Peirce. That`s all for tonight. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.