James F. Vesely: Drawing hard lines for economic viability

IT'S all about the neighborhoods.

Every stretch of the federal stimulus package, the actions of our governor and state Legislature, the moods and variations of our corporate cousins all touch on the vitality of neighborhood life.

In today's editorial on the opposite page, we try to break down, and understand, the fiscal impacts of housing in an ulcerous economy.

Much like the Wilson theory of the single broken window that induces crime to visit a block or a neighborhood, the lonesome look of abandoned houses inevitably will reduce a neighborhood to a speckled band of livable homes or foreclosed properties.

Most Americans have seen this phenomenon in their times. The cities that rise — like Denver in the 1970s, and Detroit in the 1950s — and then are touched by the cruel finger of irrelevancy.

Seattle, always the boom and bust town, is perhaps best prepared for the decline of the city-state, but old dreams die hard, and it is time to understand the issue is not the globalization of Seattle, but its safety inside the American economy.

Canadians are worried about their partner. Subtly, Canadian voices are expressing worry the provision in the federal stimulus package calling for "Buy American" is a negation of decades of useful trade across the expanse of North America. My response is not to buy American, but to buy Canadian — and let them buy from us. We are very much going to need each other.

In cities that are in danger of economic collapse, the neighborhoods are the most vulnerable to the drip-drip-drip of unsustainability. That's meant, not in the epical ecological meaning of sustaining within the environment, but sustaining the basics of coherent cities.

Once, many years ago, on my way to work in downtown Detroit, the commuter train paused at an abandoned siding and I saw, on a city street covered in weeds and grasses, a beautiful ring-necked pheasant cross the road. The city was going back to its Michigan nature.

That is not ecological sustainability but urban collapse along the lines of the 2007 movie, "I Am Legend."

No matter how many miniature goats or baby pigs we can cultivate in the arboretums of our neighborhoods, the city only thrives with the hum of civilization, not the drone of rural life.

Neighborhoods need to be enhanced by the fact that they are portions of the city, not the other way around. At the end of the day, cities are whole and not accumulations of individual neighborhoods.

That's why a federal stimulus package must carry the weight of the rejuvenation of the American urban core. I understand the impulse to live at the very edge of the metropolis, and to question its political and social life. It's fun to poke Seattle in the eye.

But the city core — whether in Vancouver, B.C., or Portland is the capillary system that feeds suburban growth and sustains the region. If Seattle could only see itself as the urban leader rather than the urban island, we would all be better off.

In the coming weeks and months, these opinion pages will try to help understand the scope of the federal stimulus package and its impact on our state. A legislature looking into the bore holes of an $8 billion-plus deficit is ready to disassemble a hundred programs, and thousands of individual connections to the nurturing state. It's impossible to think this is good for our economy or our way of life.

On these pages we have also coughed up the remains of some of our most cherished programs. Last week, we said the proposal to expand eligibility for state student-need grants to children of illegal immigrants should be abandoned.

In the same way, we have seen the dress rehearsal of a dozen interest groups prepared to present their concerns to the plaza of the state's government center in Olympia. Ferry riders, public-health organizers, economists and ecologists are going to be heard.

Our attempts in the coming weeks will be to try to sort the needy from the imperative, so that someday, in urban Seattle, the pheasant does not cross the road.

James F. Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com