Twelve Challenges for Cities

Posted by on June 14, 2006

A recent review of the annual state of the city addresses by mayors around the country shows consistent references to 12 challenges that are very much on their minds.

Here they are:

1. Revenue generation. As federal funds to cities dry up, cities are increasingly having to generate revenues locally. No elected official wants to raise taxes these days, so they are scrambling to find new sources of revenue.

2. Urban schools. Most mayors don't have direct control over schools, but schools affect their budgets, their cities' reputations and their futures. Strides are being made to improve education outcomes, but everyone knows we are moving too slowly.

3. Jobs and economic development. With the economy changing so rapidly, how can cities best position themselves to attract and retain good-paying jobs with staying power?

4. Congestion. This is the number one local complaint of local citizens. Build more roads to solve the problem and you just get more cars and more congestion. It is a thorny problem that new technology and better transportation alternatives can help solve, but very few urban leaders are employing these solutions yet. And there is little federal help to do so.

5. Attracting and retaining talent. Urban leaders are finally buying the idea that talent makes this economy move. Some places are magnets for talent. Some are not. How do the "also rans" in this category change direction?

6. Quality of place. When urban leaders learn that 64 percent of college grads ages 25 to 34 choose the place they want to live first and then choose the job, they begin to understand how important it is to be a place people want to live. And in a mobile society, if you don't offer what people want, they
will move (or never show up in the first place). But what are the right combination of elements that will, indeed, deliver a quality place?

7. Poverty. Although cities don't have the devastatingly concentrated poverty they had mid-century, it is still a problem. And poor people isolated from the mainstream have trouble getting good educations, access to jobs, access to role models. All kinds of pathologies result. How can you
disperse poor people, reconnect them to society and get them moving up the ladder?

8. Immigration. Immigrants can be a great source of energy, but they also put strains on school systems and social services and they sometimes compete with low wage workers for jobs. (Good story in the NYT recently on this profiling catfish workers in the Mississippi Delta.) Immigrants are also perceived to threaten the social order and existing culture. Many communities are attempting to "crack down" on the most visible signs of new immigrant life. America is a nation of immigrants. How do we embrace new immigrants and move them to productivity as soon as possible?

9. Making compatible development and redevelopment easier in the city. It is so much easier to develop in "green fields" than in the city. How can urban leaders make development easier where infrastructure already exists? How can they preserve strong neighborhoods but encourage new development in them? Most citizens adopt a NIMBY attitude toward new development. Managing competing interests is difficult, but key.

10. Affordable housing. The explosion of home prices has caused many
cities to reach a tipping point where young people just starting out and
families find city living difficult to afford. While no one wants housing
prices to stagnate (reflecting a much more difficult problem), no one wants
them to skyrocket either. How can urban leaders keep housing affordable
without depressing the market?

11. Public Safety. After a decline in crime rates (some say because we put so many people in jail, some say due to a smaller young adult cohort), crime rates are beginning to climb again. There is increasing evidence of beggers and people living on the streets, contributing to a sense that the streets are unsafe. No mayor ever makes a state of the city address without mentioning this issue. And with the number of prison inmates having doubled to 2.2 million in only five years, what happens when these people return?

12. The Environment. This is a new issue, but mayors are taking the lead in filling in the gaps left by federal inaction on Kyoto and alternative fuel cars. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom led the way on Kyoto. Chicago's Mayor Daley plants green roofs, insists that every public buiding is LEED certified and speeds approvals for developers with green projects. Austin Mayor Will Wynn is telling Detroit to build alternative fuel cars and Austin and other cities will buy them. It is a new form of activism on the part of mayors.