Abstract

The fate of urban dwellers, particularly minorities, has always been uncertain and turbulent, with some minority members rising to the top but with most remaining somewhere at or below the lowest levels of social and economic achievement, specially in the U.S. At the core of the problem is the vicious cycle of unemployment, low family income, poor housing, poor education and unemployment. The ultimate effect is the creation of two urban societies, one living in the suburbs, anticipating all of the delights that the twenty-first century has to offer, the other living in the central city at a level only slightly better than that which eighteenth-century American families endured. The assumption in this feature is that business need not and should not abandon its profit-making role when solving urban problems. Rather the cost of doing business in cities is increasing more rapidly than the profit potentials, so that some investment in the city by private business will improve profit potentials. Business will subsidize much of the federal urban efforts through increased taxes so that any private effort that reduces or eliminates the need for federal expenditures should reduce taxes.