1. Obama's recent background is in Chicago; a city where housing and urban policy are high on the agenda and where it has been very controversial;
2. Policy-transfer from the US to the UK is increasingly common, but not unproblematic, so any new developments there will surely impact here;
3. He promised to create a White House Office of Urban Policy;
4. He talks of 'targeting' federal dollars to urban areas and effective spending on 'high-impact' programs, but isn't this ignoring the real causes which are not in the areas that need targeting?
5. It raises the prospect of more people taking note of the work we do (e.g.)!
For the time being, however, it's just a case of wait and see and keep working on things. Right now, I'm writing a new paper which explores the extent to which spatial targeting of deprived areas for things like employment is actually a fundamentally flawed approach when there is no guarantee that jobs created in, or nearby, the poorest neighbourhoods will be of benefit to residents there.
