Inside Game Outside Game: Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America.

• Author: Miller, David Y.
• Position: Review

Rusk, David

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press: (384 pp)

Several years ago, David Rusk wrote a books, Cities Without Suburbs, which was, by his own admonition, a wake-up call to local governments in metropolitan regions regarding the linkage between city and suburb. The message was, "united we stand, divided we fall," particularly as it relates to the center city maintaining its fair share of regional growth. As much as the warning flag was raised by the book, strategies to overcome the problem, especially in the North and Midwest regions of the United States were noticeably absent or politically impractical. Annexation by the center city of the surrounding countryside as a winning strategy, although effectively articulated by Rusk, is not the most popular strategy where it is legal and, indeed, is effectively "illegal" in most of the Northeast and Midwest.

Inside Game Outside Game is Rusk's effort to address the question of practical solutions to regional cooperation. In this regard, it is as clear a summary of why regional cooperation is a necessary strategy in metropolitan areas and what practical strategies have worked elsewhere in urban America. As such, it is a must-read for all practicing local government officials, elected or appointed, working in a metropolitan region.

There is an explicit operating premise that underlies Rusk's call for regional cooperation. Poverty and its resulting social dysfunction is made worse by its concentration. Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming in suggesting that the cycle of poverty can be broken if poor children do not grow up in poor neighborhoods. Mix poor children in middle-class neighborhoods and there is a good chance they will grow up middle-class. Put poor children in poor neighborhoods and there is a good chance they will grow up poor. Unfortunately, our decentralized local government structure and suburban growth patterns foster concentrations of poverty, particularly in our center cities, These governments are becoming increasingly unable to cope with the costs of that concentrated poverty. Deconcentrating poverty, according to Rusk, is a regional responsibility and can be accomplished through regional land use planning, fair-share housing policies, and regional revenue-sharing programs.

To those who read Cities Without Suburbs, these strategies might sound vaguely familiar. These are the key elements of the "outside" game. The "inside" game represents a new dimension to Rusk's...