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A $90 billion plan to redesign the cities is an exercise in runaway grandiosity and power tripping. People who think in such terms should be kept carefully locked away, as far as possible from the levers of power. That said, many large cities are clearly beyond the point of diminishing returns on the commitment to the automobile, the suburbs, and long commutes. So what to do?

The city-suburb balance has always involved a push-pull equation. The suburbs offer new homes, typically larger homes, bigger yards, etc. That is their legitimate competitive advantage. Call it the "pull."

The suburbs have also been havens to which the middle class escapes to avoid city taxes, corrupt government, crime, and crummy schools. These are the "push" factors. From the standpoint of urban policy, these are the most important things to address. If the cities could clean up their act, many more people would choose to skip the commute. A walkable, bikeable city neighborhood with schools, churches, jobs, restaurants, and light shopping within blocks is a nice place to live. I know. I live in one.

Perhaps the cities' greatest problem is that middle class flight has tilted municipal politics overwhelmingly into the control of public employee unions and client constituencies, largely the welfare class. This makes reform extraordinarily difficult. But not impossible. When suburbanites are routinely enduring 1-2 hour commutes each way -- and God forbid someone gets a flat tire on the beltway -- it begins to occur to an increasing number of people that it would be nice to get their lives back.

As always, I think that school reform/school choice/vouchers is perhaps the easiest place to seek a breakthrough. Young people move to the cities for their jobs. They enjoy the amenities and the convenience. Then come kids, and the schools force them into the private schooling/suburban flight dilemma. Meanwhile, the underclass kids rot in schools that are just patronage and kickback machines for the local democrat party -- and they know it. There is a constituency for serious reform on both ends of the spectrum, and it is good urban as well as educational policy.

A second useful point of attack is subsidies for urban sprawl, in the form of subsidized extension of transportation and utility infrastructure. If suburban development had to pay the full marginal costs, the economics would be very different. And if close-in communities can muster the political strength to block new arterial roads that degrade their older, "in the way" neighborhoods, the pressures on suburban commutes mount rapidly.

I live in one of those neighborhoods that suburbanites often think is "in the way," and the fact is, road expansion is destructive. It is my property values and my quality of life that the roadbuilding lobby is quite happy to destroy. I tend to think people should live closer to their jobs, whether the job is downtown or on the Dulles corridor. I am certainly not willing to sacrifice the tree plats, front yards, and local parks of urban neighborhoods in order to turn pleasant streets into commuter raceways.

Last but not least, exclusionary zoning and occupancy regulations in the suburbs need to be addressed, The cities should not be treated as the default dumping grounds for the poor. The poor need to live reasonably close to job centers if we expect them to work, and excessive concentration of the welfare class leads to disastrous results. Dispersion is the key. This does not mean that a multi-family housing unit needs to be placed on every cul-de-sac, but suburban planners need to accept their fair share of apartments, duplexes, boarding houses, etc. Dispersion is the key to reintegrating the underclass into American society.

The immediate deal-breaking problem, of course, is that bad policy since the 1960's has produced a viciously dysfunctional, drug addicted, heavily criminal element in the underclass. No one, including most of the residents of poor, inner city neighborhoods, wants these people anywhere near them. But they are there, and permanent quarantine is not a good solution. But I have to head to the airport. I will yield the floor for discussions of remedies.