Urban Crisis

Buzz Bissinger, C'76, says the "seeds" of his book, A Prayer for the City, were sown by the urban vistas he took in one day on his way to a Philadelphia newspaper assignment: "an assemblage of vacant houses and boarded-up windows and collapsed porches that seemed to stretch forever." Scattered amid the wreckage were gutted and abandoned factories, the fossil residue of a changing economy that once employed the now vanished populations and left in destitution those who could not escape. "[W]hoever had built these blocks had not intended them for doom," writes Bissinger. The "deep feeling of sorrow" brought on by these sights impelled him to pose the questions that led to his book: Why had this happened? Could anything be done?

Queries such as Bissinger's provide ample grist for the academic mill, and they are critical questions confronting American society. Scholars like urban historian Tom Sugrue have documented the collapse of America's industrial cities, providing a compelling narrative that connects racism, economic restructuring, and the origins of the urban crisis. Sociologist Eli Anderson has immersed himself in the black ghetto and brought back a complex and disturbing picture of how "decent" and "street" orientations organize that subculture, making sense of the inner-city violence that seems senseless to many. This kind of research has important implications for policy makers and helps inform responses to the urban crisis. The practical question of how to respond to that crisis, though, is the more daunting one.

As the postwar economy shifted into high gear, jobs and the middle class departed from the city, leaving behind a lethal brew of chronic unemployment, poverty, and disintegrating social structures. The forsaken people of the inner city, in particular people of color, have become a kind of postindustrial waste, cast off by the global service economy.

Penn is situated in "the shadow of the ghetto," to use Professor Anderson's expression, and the violence and crime that attend the loss of hope spill onto the campus. In testimony before a Congressional subcommittee, Ira Harkavy, director of Penn's Center for Community Partnerships, had this to say: "Universities have compelling reasons–including enlightened self-interest–to help improve America's communities. They are among the only institutions rooted in the American city. They cannot move–the community's fate is their fate. Moreover, working to solve the problems of their university's locality provides students and faculty with an outstanding opportunity for learning, service, and advancing knowledge."

In a world where the gap between privilege and poverty continues to widen, is it a misfortune that a privileged institution such as Penn should be "trapped" in the inner city? Perhaps it is a blessing, driving home the lesson that ecologists have been trying to impart with some urgency: rich and poor, black and white, we all share the same fate. Whether out of compassion, idealism, or self-interest, Penn has seized that fate, mobilizing its resources and its academic mission to position itself as a leading urban university. The School of Arts and Sciences plays a major part in that venture. Along with the University, SAS is working to be an answer to a prayer for the city.