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whole would be better off if such neighborhoods were fixed

up to look more like middle-class neighborhoods.  Moreover,

political obstacles emerge for local elected officials when

neighborhoods decline.  Mayors can hardly take pride in the

fact that their metropolitan areas are generally thriving

when some city neighborhoods are losing population and

property values are declining.  Moreover, abandonment and

declining home prices mean a loss in property tax revenue

for city governments.

Secretary Weaver crystalized the view that public

intervention was necessary to stop the downward trend.

"Residents and city administrations find themselves in a

spiral," wrote Weaver.  "The cities need to provide required

services and the residents to pay the increased taxes.

There is a need for more housing, particularly to serve the

lower end of the income scale, more and better quality

schools, more recreation facilities, more hospitals and

sewage and water facilities."22

Implicitly, Weaver was arguing that specific neighbor-

hoods had to be saved to save cities generally.  In other

words, HUD wanted both to help the poor by rebuilding apart-

ments and to help the cities generally by salvaging the

areas in which the poor lived.  That contrasted with the

urban renewal movement of the 1950s, which sought to rebuild

central city commercial and residential areas to attract the

middle class.  Thus government, the new logic of the 1960s

would dictate, must prevent the abandonment of structures

and restore dilapidated structures to their previous condi-

tion while simultaneously earmarking them as residences for

the poor.

There is a good case to be made, however, especially in

light of the history of the past 30 years, that an entirely

different sort of urban policy approach would lend itself to

greater economic vigor in cities.  It is akin to what Sen.

Daniel Moynihan (D-N.Y.), frustrated with the meager results

of social programs, termed "benign neglect."  It is a case

for allowing neighborhoods to find their real level of value

so as to set the stage for their long-term, sustainable

renewal.  All cities experience long-term real estate demand

cycles.  Cities can be thought of as urban ecosystems, in

which various districts and residential neighborhoods fill a

variety of niches and play a variety of roles.  Jane Jacobs,

author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, who

is generally viewed as our era's most insightful observer of