THOUGH I count myself an admirer of Edward Glaeser's work, I'm bewildered at his columns' broadsides against any federal assistance for depressed urban communities, most recently in "Politicians, places, and bad policies" (Op-ed, Feb. 1). I didn't think Professor Glaeser was a social Darwinist, but he sure sounds like one. According to him, efforts to revive declining cities not only are doomed to fail, but represent an unfair tax on the rest of the country, and disturb the "level playing field" for economic development.
We might remember that by this view it would have been useless to try to turn around cities like Boston, widely seen as on its deathbed in the middle of the last century. But Boston and other cities achieved a renaissance in which federal investment, in combination with local leadership and private investment, played a considerable role.
And there is no "level playing field" - federal policies shape and reshape the development landscape. In fact, most of the force of the national government has been profoundly anticity since World War II, in the form of highways that destroyed city neighborhoods, tax breaks that largely subsidized suburban development, and so on. It is remarkable that so much urban revival has occurred with so little national assistance.
PAUL S. GROGAN
Boston
The writer is president of the Boston Foundation.
