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

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 work. The alternative to a regional program to disperse poverty is the adopted strategy of the last 30 years--simply rebuild the poverty neighborhoods. The federal government has embraced this strategy by pouring billion's into rebuilding inner city neighborhoods. It has fostered over 2,000 Community Development Corporations (CDCs) that serve to aid in this rebuilding of inner-city America.

In order to advance the regional cooperation solution, the "contain poverty" strategy has to be shown as ineffective. Rusk, never without cold and hard data to support his claims, successfully walks a delicate line between acknowledging the hard work of the nation's best CDCs and their utter and complete failure to turn any poverty neighborhood into a non-poverty neighborhood. Deriving statistics from the neighborhoods served by 34 "exemplary" CDCs identified by the National Council for Community Economic Development and the Community Development Research Council, Rusk assessed their performance. Two examples capture the losing battle that poverty containment is fighting. Poverty rates for families increased from 23 percent in 1980 to 26 percent in 1990 in neighborhoods served by "exemplary" CDCs formed in the 1970s. Poverty increased 9 percent from 1970 to 1990 in neighborhoods served by "exemplary" CDCs formed in the 1960s. Average household income as a percent of metrowide average household income decreas ed from 64 percent in 1980 to 58 percent in 1990 in neighborhoods served by CDCs formed in the 1970s and from 61 percent in 1970 to 53 percent in 1990 in neighborhoods served by CDCs formed in the 1960s. Rusk enhanced his factual analysis with visits to several of the CDCs. His stories behind the numbers make for insightful reading and further evidence that the problem is beyond the best management's ability to solve. Hence, the inescapable conclusion reached by Rusk is that continuing to "run up the down escalator" (inside game) should be replaced by pursuing the strategies of the outside game.

The meat of the book is a series of case studies of outside game strategies that have been used successfully elsewhere. Those include the growth control strategies employed in Portland, Oregeon; the mixed housing strategies of Montgomery County, Maryland; the voluntary tax-base sharing program in Dayton, Ohio; and the coalition building strategies used in Minneapolis. To Rusk's credit, he has avoided presenting top-down regional strategies in favor of home-grown solutions. For instance, Dayton's tax-base sharing program is of little economic consequence or value compared to the $200 million tax-base sharing plan in Minnesota or the $60 million revenue sharing program in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Both of these programs are far more important and redistributive, but were legislatively imposed and therefore excluded from his examples. Indeed, the Dayton experience is more a case study in the recalcitrance of governments to think regionally than as a replicable model.

The final section of the book identifies who the major players will be in shaping the governance structure of the metropolitan regions of the future. Relying on indepth case studies drawn from his own experience, Rusk points to ways faith-based institutions, the business community, universities, grass-roots citizen groups, and foundations can serve to build the coalitions that can lead to meaningful outside game strategies. Indeed, it is the marriage of the civil rights and environmental movements that may well spearhead restructuring.

For those who need to see the "numbers," they are there in quantity. For those who may have found Cities Without Suburbs too driven by the "numbers," Inside Game Outside Game is full of firsthand, practical case studies that effectively bring the "numbers" to life.

David Y Miller, Ph.D., Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania.