The Future Once Happened Here.

It is always salutary to be reminded of our mistakes. And the architects of American urban fiscal and welfare policy over the last quarter century made some whoppers. Intransigent naivete, blindness to inevitable consequences, cowardice in the face of bullying and corruption -- all of these sins are laid out in convincing detail in Fred Siegel's new book.

Siegel's thesis is that our big cities, and specifically New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, have been going to hell in a handbasket because their leaders have squandered their resources on welfare bureaucracies, neglected public order, splintered civic unity over issues of race and ethnicity, and ignored the market economy. The argument seems not so much wrong as irrelevant to our present troubles:

* The recent welfare reforms have completely changed the fiscal picture.

* Community policing and the exhaustion of citizens' patience with public disorder have altered the debate over public order.

* Issues of race and ethnicity continue to roil the civic body politic, but demagoguing these issues has begun to backfire as a political technique. New York's Al Sharpton is now seen more as a pathetic figure than as a monster, a distraction rather than a threat.

* Reviving the economy of the big cities is recognized as the major problem of governance. The question is no longer whether but how to do it.

Siegel's view of all these problems is essentially a backward-looking one. He seems more concerned with what he considers the excessive social services available in New York City for a child with emotional problems than with the inadequacy of these resources (as documented by investigative journalism). And he complains about the deinstitutionalization of mental patients (has he forgotten the exposes of Willowbrook?) rather than about the collapse of the community mental health centers that should be providing a better answer.

Siegel is at his sharpest in describing the limitations of individual leaders -- the righteousness of John Lindsay, the cynicism of Ed Koch, the timorousness of David Dinkins, the laissez faire demagogy of Sam Yorty, and the complete abdication of responsibility by Marion Barry. Nor is Siegel blind to the failings of the new generation of reformers, who he wishes would lead us back into ancient paths of virtue. Although he takes a more positive view of the incumbent mayors in New York and Los Angeles, he notes Giuliani's "expert[isel in the art of turning would-be allies into enemies," and Riordan's inability to articulate a consistent vision.

But Siegel offers only a few glimpses of his vision of the future. He sees hope in the of retail trade and the opportunities it offers for entry-level employment. He is more optimistic than most analysts about the chances of upward mobility from a McDonald's counter. He describes in, glowing terms the new Mexican immigrant neigborhoods in Los Angeles, arguing that "the strength of their conventional values gives the Mexicans another advantage." He recalls the strategy he had proposed for New York when he was a "senior member" of the Giuliani transition team. This strategy was "to quickly make the budget cuts that would both restore fiscal balance and make targeted but substantial business tax cuts possible." It sounds like the old supply side economics applied locally -- and is just about as credible, or as specific.

In his concluding chapter, Siegel offers an odd metaphor, taken from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. On the grounds of an English manor house occupied by the British Army during World War II, Waugh is surprised to find that the soldiers are "quietly rediscovering" an abandoned chapel. Siegel suggests we may find guidance for the future in the abandoned artifacts "lining city streets ... vestiges of a world that worked."

What Siegel seems to be suffering from is a terminal case of nostalgia, for a time that never was. New York, Washington, Los Angeles in the '50s were good places to live and work for some, and bad for others -- particularly every kind of minority. As economies and as polities these cities have been battered by the events of the last quarter century, and they have suffered their share of self-inflicted wounds. Washington is suffering particularly from the absence of strong, responsible elected leadership, but 30 years ago Washington was just beginning to emerge from colonial status. Los Angeles 30 years ago was on the verge of a major riot. New York went badly down hill during those years and is on the rise again. Although the reasons for its rise are not readily discernible, they are probably located in the shifting currents of commerce. As Harvey Brooks has observed, "Projections are surprise-free; the future is surprise-rich." And the future is happening all the time.