[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 65 (Thursday, May 6, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S4930]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              BOB WOOD--THINKER AND DOER FOR URBAN AMERICA

 Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, one of America's greatest leaders 
for our cities and metropolitan areas over the past half century has 
been Robert C. Wood.
  All of us who know Bob Wood have enormous respect for his ability, 
his leadership, and his brilliant service to the country. He was an 
outstanding Under Secretary and Secretary of Housing and Urban 
Development for President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, and he 
pioneered the development of many of the nation's most important 
programs to enhance the vitality of our cities and improve the quality 
of life in metropolitan areas across the country.
  In Massachusetts, we have special respect and affection for Bob Wood 
because of all that he has done for our state, especially for his 
service as a past chairman of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation 
Authority and as a past Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, 
and also for his brilliant academic leadership both at M.I.T. and the 
University of Massachusetts.
  In an excellent column by Martin F. Nolan in yesterday's Boston 
Globe, Bob Wood reflected on his remarkable career of service to 
Massachusetts and the nation. I believe the column will be of interest 
to all of us in Congress who know and admire Bob, and I ask that it be 
printed in the Record.
  The article follows.

                  [From the Boston Globe, May 5, 1999]

                A Thinker and a Doer on America's Cities

                          (By Martin F. Nolan)

       When he first put his ideas into practice, America was 
     asking, ``Can cities be saved?'' That question today would 
     sound preposterous during reflections on a 50-year career in 
     public service from an eyrie high above Boston Harbor, where 
     piers once rotted and urban dreams died.
       ``Cities were written off too soon,'' says Bob Wood. 
     ``Their commonality with suburbs is increasing, and people 
     are realizing that a strategy against sprawl is not a direct 
     assault on local governments.''
       Battling sprawl is nothing new for Wood. When President 
     Lyndon Johnson created task forces on housing and urban 
     policy in 1964, ``Charlie Haar and I flew down every Saturday 
     morning at 7:30. He headed the president's task force on 
     environment, and I was chairman of the task force on urban 
     problems, so we became very good friends during those 
     weekends. He became assistant secretary of metropolitan 
     development and I became the first undersecretary of housing 
     and urban development.'' Wood later became HUD secretary.
       In the Great Society's efforts to save American cities, 
     Cambridge played a major role. Haar taught at Harvard Law 
     School, and Wood was the first chairman of the political 
     science department at MIT.
       ``Sprawl was recognized in the '60s legislation,'' he 
     recalls. ``The idea of metropolitan development was to go 
     hand in hand with urban renewal and what we were doing with 
     the Model Cities program. It was explicit, but given Vietnam 
     and the budget, we couldn't fund it and do well. We only did 
     pieces of it.''
       ``Vietnam took so much energy, time, money, and political 
     capital,'' Wood remembers. Next week, when Lady Bird Johnson 
     will be hostess at a Texas reunion of LBJ's Cabinet, Wood 
     will not be eager to greet former Defense Secretary Robert S. 
     McNamara ``and the rest of `the best and the brightest.' '' 
     Wood sees similarities between Vietnam then and Yugoslavia 
     today: ``It's underclared, slowly escalating, with an 
     assumption of falling dominoes.''
       Wood does not praise President Clinton or Vice President 
     Gore for tackling sprawl, crediting economic forces with 
     highlighting the problem: ``The Clinton administration had no 
     real interest in tough decisions on urban issues or any 
     other. Clinton took his polls from Dick Morris. But the 
     country grew faster than predicted, and the cost of suburban 
     development in housing, schools, and land became increasingly 
     high. In the `80s, the recession had killed building 
     development. In the '90s, with prosperity, people are 
     building mansions in the suburbs. Overwhelmingly, political 
     power is in the suburbs.''
       In 1958, long before he moved from Lincoln to the Boston 
     waterfront, Wood popularized ``Suburbia'' with a book by that 
     title in which he wrote that ``transportation is the central 
     reality of the metropolitan community.'' After his tensure at 
     HUD he got a chance to put his ideas into action locally.
       ``When I can back from working for LBJ and got declared a 
     war criminal by students at MIT, Governor Frank Sargent 
     thought it would be a good idea for me to be chairman of the 
     MBTA. It seemed a natural,'' he says.
       One of his proudest achievements is ``the basic 
     transformation of Somerville. Because of the Red Line 
     extension, we got Davis Square as we know it. That's why 
     Tufts is blossoming and why Somerville is where grad students 
     from Harvard and elsewhere settle. That's what transit can 
     do. It happened in Quincy, too.''
       Wood has also been Boston school superintendent and 
     president of the University of Massachusetts. A graduate of 
     Princeton with degrees from Harvard, he was also director of 
     Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard and MIT.
       In 1949, this veteran of the 76th Army Infantry Division in 
     World War II became associate director of Florida's 
     Legislative Reference Bureau. He got to know and like 
     politicians, which is why Robert Coldwell Wood, at 75, is 
     unsurpassed as a thinker and a doer.

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