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

by David Rusk

Book Overview

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For the past three decades, the federal government has targeted the poorest areas of American cities with a succession of antipoverty initiatives, yet these urban neighborhoods continue to decline. According to David Rusk, focusing on programs aimed at improving inner-city neighborhoods--playing the ""inside game""--is a losing strategy. Achieving real improvement requires matching the ""inside game"" with a strong ""outside game"" of regional...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815776519
• ISBN13: 9780815776512
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

fighting the big lie

The biggest obstacle Americans suffer to any sort of progress on urban problems is the Big Lie that after being forced to lie in their own excrement for decades, America's poorest cities can right themselves through a little more efficiency (in the conservative version) or Great Society spending on "community development" (in the liberal version). Rusk shows why community development doesn't work, and also shows why most cities (other than a few immigration hubs like NYC and Sun Belt cities with unlimited annexation powers) simply can't compete with their suburbs without outside help (or at least without a termination of outside hostility, such as highway spending that drags development ever further into the suburbs): if a city has no tax base and poor people who make public services more expensive, it can't compete with the suburbs, efficiency or no efficiency. Like Cities without Suburbs (also by Rusk), this is a masterpiece.

A "Must Read" for Those Concerned about Urban Poverty

Rusk's book roots out the causes of concentrated urban poverty, proposes solutions, and provides examples of success stories. Rusk convincingly argues that poor racial minorities should be welcome to live in functional neighborhoods, such as the suburbs. I attended a conference at which Rusk discussed "Inside Game, Outside Game," and I was delighted to hear one politician declare that that book should be required reading for every politician in my state. I agree.