March 1998
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HUD Secretary Joins Local Leaders
to Discuss Future of CitiesEducation, safety and race are the three biggest issues cities must address in order to improve, said Andrew Cuomo, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Cuomo was one of three panelists at "The Future of Our Cities: What Should Be Done to Improve Them, By Whom, and How?," the Feb. 11 event of the Forum for the 21st Century: Shaping Boston's Future. Paul Guzzi, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, was moderator.
"There are still very real structural problems just beneath the surface, especially for cities," Cuomo told a packed auditorium at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. "Cities were designed for manufacturing," he said. Now that an information, high-tech economy has emerged, "cities have to find their niche in the new economy," he said.
According to Cuomo, cities need to become leaders in a soon-to-be "majority minority" nation. "Ninety-three percent of the foreign-born Americans are in cities, in metropolitan areas," he said. "If we can't do it in cities, then as we become more and more diverse, we're going to have a problem as a nation."
Cities need to make themselves more attractive to investors, particularly by offering a well-educated work force, said panelist Mitt Romney, ceo of Bain Capital Inc. and 1994 Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. "Our children are not educated to compete in a worldwide marketplace," Romney said. "We're competing globally, and our kids aren't ready."
The third panelist, Marian Heard, president and CEO of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, stressed personal participation. "We believe that while the economy has been good for some people, it has not been good for everyone," she told an applauding audience. "There is a place for everyone. People with good will can come together and work together," she said.
Opportunities are not equal, the panelists concurred. "The cities' education system is an inferior education system to the suburban education system and the private education system," Cuomo said. First-graders at some schools play educational games on computers with Pentium chips, while "other kids go to school, and the most sophisticated piece of electronic equipment is the metal detector they walk through to go to class," he said.
Several audience questions pertained to affordable housing. "Every year since we started keeping these numbers, this nation produced more affordable housing than it loss É until 1996," Cuomo said. Two years ago, for the first time in history, the nation saw the highest need for affordable housing coupled with the lowest construction ever, Cuomo said.
He encouraged citizens to lobby Rep. Barney Frank, Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II and Sen. John Kerry -- all key players in affordable housing legislation. "This city is nationally famous for the community organizations and grass roots organizations," Cuomo added.
Prior to closing the forum, Rep. Barney Frank yielded some of his time to Mel King. The former state representative King spoke briefly about "a situation in Boston that deals with the future of this city" -- the recent sale of a Roxbury parcel of land to Northeastern University. Despite active participation, Roxbury residents were ignored, because of their race and economic status, King said. "How are they going to participate when they do, and they get ignored."
"The resistance to measures to decrease inequality is exacerbated by the issue of race," Frank responded in his closing address.
Frank's comments focused primarily on education. "For most Americans, I think the school system has done well," he said. But more resources need to be transferred into education, he said. "I agree that the optimum thing to do is to increase opportunity and get people better educated."