The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama will be our first president whose heritage is from the central cities since Grover Cleveland, who left the office in 1897. Prior to becoming president, Cleveland had been a reform mayor of Buffalo, and then governor of New York. I think they missed one: Theodore Roosevelt grew up in New York City and represented part of the city in the legislature. But presidents since then have been from suburbs or small towns.
Obama, however, was born in Honolulu, went to school in Jakarta, Los Angeles, and New York, and got his famous job as a community organizer in Chicago. His only “suburban” time was getting his law degree in Cambridge, MA.
From one perspective, the war on sprawl is really a war between central cities and suburbs. The central cities see the suburbs growing and want some of that growth (and the tax revenues that come with it) for themselves. By demonizing the suburbs, at the very least they have a chance to grab more than their share of federal and state funds for housing and transportation.
