[StockAyatollah]

Orfield, who is a Democrat, is also a passionate advocate of stronger metropolitan government as the answer to the challenges facing central cities and all varieties of suburbs. His agenda calls for tax-sharing, stronger land-use planning, campaigns for affordable housing and other measures he says would halt the decline in some parts of the region and relieve the growth pressures being experienced in others.

In other words, let's take the disastrous leftist policies that caused people to flee the cities, and put them to work in the suburbs.

[cogitator]

In other words, let's take the disastrous leftist policies that caused people to flee the cities, and put them to work in the suburbs.

Broder doesn't advocate the author's positions, but he does state them. From my vantage point outside Frederick, MD, I can see some of the problems and read about other problems closer in to Baltimore and Washington. One of the clearest problems facing both is the aging of the inner suburbs, which reduces their attractiveness as places to live despite much better infrastructure compared to the outer suburbs. I think that's a major area that has to be addressed nationwide. As to how to address it, I'll leave that to the individual states and cities to decide.

[balrog666]

Orfield, who is a Democrat, is also a passionate advocate of stronger metropolitan government as the answer to the challenges facing central cities and all varieties of suburbs. His agenda calls for tax-sharing, stronger land-use planning, campaigns for affordable housing and other measures he says would halt the decline in some parts of the region and relieve the growth pressures being experienced in others.

Allow me to rephrase the obvious:

Orfield, who is a idiot, is an advocate of making independent suburban towns subject to urban governments.
Orfield thinks that cities should be allowed to:
steal taxes from outlying suburbs,
control zoning and growth in non urban areas so no more suburbs are ever built,
institute rent control over landlord's property and restrict people's right to contract for housing, so as to destroy the housing construction business and insure that more housing is never built, and
institute local minimum wage laws that are not based on market forces or rationality of any kind so as to destroy those businesses that had the temerity to have fled the high-tax, low-sales, high-crime urban centers.

And all to halt the inexorable decline in urban city tax dollars, the impoverishment of the expanding urban welfare programs, and the further escaping of free citizens from urban tax slavery and property confiscation.

[KC_Conspirator]

In other words, let's take the disastrous leftist policies that caused people to flee the cities, and put them to work in the suburbs.

You are exactly right! If you read any poly sci textbooks, almost all of them are written by leftists talk about this idea. Furthermore, its motivated by greed as controlling leftists see all the money and success and literally want to take it away.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Most of the suburbs were created because the land prices in the cities and housing costs drove the population farther out. This growth occurred principally because of economic reasons not political. Many of the suburbs surrounding Chicago for example are MORE liberal than the city.