America has to deal with its cities.

• Position: Henry Cisneros' speech, April 19, 1993 - Transcript

The following are excerpts from an address delivered by Secretary Cisneros to an April 19, 1993, conference in Washington, D.C., "After the Los Angeles Riots: New Perspectives on America's Urban Crisis," sponsored by the Progressive Policy Institute.

Like piles of dry wood with red hot coals underneath, American cities can ignite. Or we will call ourselves lucky, and they will just keep smoldering.

Why are our cities smoldering? Perhaps it is a matter of isolation. Our cities and neighborhoods have become more geographically segregated by race, class and ethnicity. Fifty cities of more than 100,000 persons now have populations that are majority African-American, Hispanic and Asian. White populations have left, some seeking the advantages of the suburbs, some fleeing the deteriorated, crime-ridden conditions, the physical environment of the city, and others escaping people, the minority populations themselves. The result is desperation, distrust and poor populations left behind to fend for themselves in racial enclaves.

Cities no longer play the role that they once did: they have been transformed from the manufacturing, goods-producing engines that they once were into cities that offer finance and service jobs, employment frequently ill matched to the populations who live in the cities. And we ask why are our cities smoldering?

Geographically isolated, economically depressed, racially segregated, cities have become warehouses of our poorest. Today more than 2 million families are poor despite having an adult member in the household working full time. One out of every five children in our country is born in poverty. One out of every three Latino children begins life in poverty, and one out of every two African-American children.

The economic crisis of the cities is exacerbated in poor neighborhoods so that low-income families do not have access to the necessities the rest of us take for granted. When they want to cash a check, they are forced to go to stores that often charge gouging rates. When they want to shop for groceries, they may have to travel miles to a supermarket. When their children go to school, schools often are dilapidated if not outright dangerous. When they need a health clinic, they frequently have no substitute for the trauma center of the public hospital. For them, affordable housing is not a dream but a nightmare. There are 4.1 million more potential low-income renters than there is affordable rental housing.

Urban experts who review this litany of realities reserve their harshest criticism for the role of the federal government itself in reinforcing and exacerbating these terrible trends.

* Large public housing developments have concentrated the poorest of the poor in...