Franklin D. Roosevelt

Statement on a Report of the National Resources Committee.

September 20, 1937

For the first time in our history the attention of the United States Government has been officially directed to the role of the city in our national economy through this report of the National Resources Committee. This inquiry examines urban life in a manner comparable to that given the problems of rural areas in a period extending over many years.

I have often said that the prosperity and general well-being of those who dwell on the farm is directly and indirectly connected with the opportunity of those in the city to maintain a decent level of economic and social life. One cannot progress without the other. We are all members of one body and the production and consumption of one is related to the production and consumption of the other. The struggle for democratic government and higher standards of human living goes on alike in city and Country.

This valuable report takes stock of our urban centers as parts of our national resources, calls attention to a wide range of important urban situations, relates these problems to our national problem, and points out the ways of dealing with many emerging and critical trends of urban life.

Outstanding among the city problems analyzed are the trends of urban population, mushroom growth, land policies, urban housing and slums, urban planning, the problems of public health, crime and crime prevention, education and recreation, overlapping governmental organizations, the place of the city in our transportation and power structure and organization, the possibilities of sounder Federal-City interrelationships.

It may be questioned whether the National Government has given the same careful attention to some of these specific and common problems of urban dwellers as it has to the problems of farmers through the Department of Agriculture, and it is the purpose of this report to indicate some of the emerging city problems in which the Nation as a whole has an interest and in which the National Government may be helpful. It is not the business of the United States Government to assume responsibility for the solution of purely local problems any more than it is the business of local governments to assume primary responsibility for the settlement of national problems. Yet, the United States Government does not remain indifferent to the common life of American citizens simply because they happen to be found in what we call "cities." The sanitation, the education, the housing, the working and living conditions, the economic security—in brief, the general welfare of all- are American concerns, insofar as they are within the range of Federal power and responsibility under the Constitution.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Statement on a Report of the National Resources Committee. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/208752

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