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America's Mayors as Political Resource
April 16, 2008
Posted by: Carol
Writing in Metropolis (4.08), Karrie Jacobs surveys the municipal landscape and concludes that mayors around the world are acting with unusual determination to address big issues such as disasters, climate change, new energy generation, and homeland security. And they are acting in ways that may be contrary to the policies of their national leaders.
" But because our social and technological progress has been retarded by the Bush administration's narrow focus on war -- and its crippling of federal agencies through cronyism, incompetence, and underfunding -- mayors like Richard M. Daley in Chicago and Michael Bloomberg in New York look exceptionally capable by comparison," Jacobs writes.
Jacobs cites Drum Major Institute's claim that in today's presidential campaign, America is all heartland." (That is a claim that I heartily disagree with and clearly was more a function of previous primary campaigns that ended before they got to urban states.) But criticizes the videos of mayors produced by DMI and Nation magazine posted here as little more than complaints about what the federal government doesn't do for cities.
Jacobs believes Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper got it right when he called cities "America's laboratories" and urged the federal government to support the roll-out of new ideas discovered in cities to the nation as a whole. She cites the "highly evolved bike culture of Portland; Los Angeles's efforts to remake its long-neglected downtown; the ambitious greening of Chicago; the support of innovative low-cost housing in Austin; and the emerging solar economy in Albuquerque" as examples of innovations worth spreading.
"Our next president, whoever he or she may be, should piggyback on the collective wisdom of the cities," she concludes.
Amen to that.
Andrea Batista Schlesinger, April 16, 2008
Hi - Thanks for this post! I think Jacobs' piece is fair enough, though she didn't characterize the videos as "little more than complaints," because they weren't. Ultimately, in fact, the issue isn't with the videos, it's with the message of mayors, all of whom viewed themselves as innovators but struggling in a climate in which federal attention to cities has been minimal. (I'll also point out that we launched MayorTV in the midst of the Iowa primaries, thus the focus on heartland). We can't fault the mayors for their frustration, even if we think that their message is ultimately unhelpful to the broader movement. We can highlight innovation, and we must, but that doesn't make their challenges and their need for federal attention to those challenges disappear.
Link: http://www.drummajorinstitute.org
Carol Coletta, April 16, 2008
Andrea, imo the idea for mayortv.org is fabulous. But I found the mayors' comments generally uninspiring. There was no big idea, nothing that made me want to write my Congressman and say, "Get that funded." I've had an interesting volunteer experience over the past 5 months fielding calls from voters. Not one has asked me how a candidate feels about "urban" issues. I've not had a single question about an "urban agenda." That's the climate in which candidates for president (and mayors) must operate. No one supports cities more than me and no one believes they deserve more support from the feds (with our money). But we have to get real about the message that will sell to American voters (and to the candidates trying to get themselves elected). In part, maybe we have to alter our own ideas about what's on the urban agenda. NAFTA? Health Care? College tuition tax credits? Seems they all play a part in the urban agenda. Not too many years ago, no one would have put climate change on the urban agenda. And yet, much of the innovation is coming from mayors. When given an opportunity, mayors should communicate the great things they are doing and learning and want to spread to others. Drum Major Institute is to be congratulated for mayortv.org.