" It seems like a long time ago now, but in the early days of the Obama presidency, one of the Administration’s signature efforts was going to be its renewed commitment to “urban policy” — that constellation of interlocking programs that shape our schools, our transportation networks, our neighborhoods and our local economies, and whose reach extends well beyond the “urban core” to the 80 percent of Americans who live in metropolitan areas. The federal government had paid “insufficient attention” to those challenges, Obama declared just a month into his tenure, and his team was going to take advantage of fresh ideas to devise a comprehensive, holistic approach. And while this program would of course require more new strategies and smarter planning, discussions of the agenda also invoked the great struggles of the 1960s: in a speech in May, Shaun Donovan, Obama’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, described the creation of “a geography of opportunity” as the “unfinished business of the Civil Rights movement.”"  

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