Abandonment means recognizing that, with the growth of suburbia, the city may have outlived its usefulness. The city, some say, will wither and disappear. Encirclement means that people in a city will live in separate enclaves. The racial and ethnic walls will go higher. What will be lost for everyone will be freedom, civility and the chance to build a common future.
Transformation means winning over all segments of urban life to a new politics of common effort.
Answers won't come only from the elite who determine what the new society will look like. Instead, the future will be shaped in large part by the people from inside the turmoil of urban America. Transformation requires listening to the disaffected and the powerful alike. The Federal Crime Bill of 1994 was a fine piece of work. Still, it dealt directly with only those 5 percent of the crimes committed that violate federal law.