Our Nation's urban policy must be responsive to today's increasingly complex social, economic, and political context. Members of the policymaking community rely on research to help them understand the profound changes and challenges that are transforming the face of urban America. At its best, this scholarship can help decisionmakers accommodate diverse perspectives and types of information, recognize the salient indicators in a sea of facts, identify emerging urban trends, and trace their impact on our collective lives and fortunes. Above all, this research should create a richer understanding of the urban condition that advances the consideration of policy alternatives.

This issue of Cityscape highlights four examples of such research that, taken together, provide a provocative panorama of the urban landscape. William H. Frey and Elaine L. Fielding examine the confluence of economic restructuring, immigration, and suburban hegemony in creating metropolitan regions increasingly divided in terms of race, income, and opportunity. Franklin J. James describes the economic forces that have conditioned the ability of urban areas and populations to adapt and prosper in a post-industrial economic system, and the lessons of that experience for current national policy. Keith R. Ihlanfeldt offers a review of what we know about the economic interdependence of central cities and their suburbs. James R. Follain and Edward J. Szymanoski focus on an important challenge for Federal policy—the inability of the private market to provide debt financing for multifamily housing, particularly for rental units affordable to low- and moderate-income families.

The Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) commissions research of this type to aid the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and other decisionmakers in formulating national urban policy. However, we also recognize that you—as a leader in government, business, or academia, or simply as a concerned citizen—have a direct stake in this policy. We hope that you will find this issue of Cityscape useful in stimulating your own thinking about how we can work together to meet the challenges facing our communities today.