As urban areas grow in size and importance, mayors could find themselves with more power than heads of government
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio protesting about the dismissal of medical staff. Photo: William Alatriste
I grew up in Solihull in the English Midland county of Warwickshire. The town’s motto is ‘Urbs in Rure’ – translated from the Latin it means ‘city in country’. It was a prescient choice of slogan in the 1930s.
A century ago, less than five per cent of the world’s population lived in cities. Today, more than half the world’s population is moving from the country to live in urban areas. In the last 20 years, the urban population of the developing world has grown by an average of three million people per week. By 2050 it will have reached 70 per cent, representing 6.4 billion people.
Most of the growth will be taking place in the developing world and it’s estimated that Asia will host 63 per cent of the global urban population, or 3.3 billion people, by 2050. The world as a whole is experiencing a massive population boom and wholesale migration from country to town. And those twin trends are presenting vast logistical challenges in terms of housing, food, power and water.
One of the areas where that impact will be felt earliest is the Middle East. It is right in the middle of one of the biggest demographic shifts the world has ever seen. According to UN projections, the population of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) will reach 430 million in six years, of which 280 million people are expected to live in cities. That’s a 65 per cent increase in the urban population.
But although urbanisation is intrinsically neither a good nor a bad process, its success will depend on how it’s managed. Urbanisation poses challenges for employment, infrastructure, transport, affordable housing, food supplies, rubbish collection and education. However, with the notable exception of water, it is normally cheaper per capita to provide such services in cities than in rural areas.
What is also certain is that, as more people move to cities and more human activity is concentrated into them, we can be sure that the most important global challenges that we face in this century will play out in urban environments. And that will mean huge challenges for the planners, the politicians and, of course, the new populations.
Cities have to evolve to meet these challenges. They don’t have a choice. They are already home to the vast majority of the world’s economic growth, innovation and social transformation, and they must continue to develop if they are to withstand relentless population growth. But as the urban population increases year-on-year, new challenges will undoubtedly arise – not least in building sustainable living conditions that do not harm the environment.
The changes will warrant more complex city management requiring evermore intelligent technology and more distinct leadership to meet the changing challenges. These improved connections enable us to develop smarter solutions to meet future challenges. As cities increasingly specialise to gain comparative advantage, a wide variety of clever solutions are emerging. Many think tanks are exploring the most ingenious solutions to enable sustainable urban development, with a particular focus on networks, connections and sustainability.
The United Kingdom and Brazil recently signed a bilateral agreement. It was nothing out of the ordinary in these days of globalisation. The difference was, this agreement was not between countries. It was signed between the United Kingdom and São Paulo – a city state.
With the strengthening of local power, the world’s major cities, states and provinces have adopted international policies previously reserved for national governments and mustered resources to ensure the protection of their interests abroad. Baden-Württemberg, California, Guangdong, Texas and São Paulo have more economic ammunition than the vast majority of countries on the planet. California has the ninth-largest economy in the world, ahead of India and Russia; São Paulo ranks 19th, ahead of every country in South America except Brazil itself. Cities are the centres of our modern society and they are getting more complex and demanding every day.
So who are the people that are leading this profound demographic revolution? They are the new world economic power brokers – city mayors. There are an estimated million mayors leading global change and at the same time having to deal with the consequences of the way we live and the decisions we take. They are shaping people’s lives and the ecological, cultural and social landscapes of their countries. They are the new global elite whose choices matter everyday. Leaders who work, face to face, with the people they serve. Leaders who, everyday, have to invent local solutions for global problems. One of those coming up with solutions is the mayor of Bangui in the Central African Republic. Catherine Samba-Pamza took over as interim President of the war-torn country. She called on the international community to save the former French colony from further violence.
And it’s likely she will be listened to and allowed to govern, because as a former mayor she showed she could govern without discrimination. She is leading a city, not a clan or sect or a faith, and is applying those city leadership skills to a country.
The new occupant of New York City Hall on Manhattan’s Broadway, Bill de Blasio will have more money to spend than a small country – and a population to match. So perhaps it’s no surprise that when the identity of New York’s new mayor was revealed it made news around the world. He could accurately be described as the most powerful mayor on the planet because the job comes with unique executive powers – hiring and firing the people heading the city’s key agencies, like schools and the police, while also setting the budget.
The California governor doesn’t even have that power. And the mayor controls the education of one million children. Education around the world is usually a national responsibility and not a city governor responsibility. It’s power that has come incrementally, ever since the British drove the Dutch out and gave the city control of its waterfront in the 17th century. But today it’s a job that doesn’t hog the international stage on its own. The ever-quotable London Mayor Boris Johnson appears on primetime US television and his predecessor Ken Livingstone struck a controversial oil deal in Venezuela with Hugo Chávez.
Mayors, without question, are consistent with the spirit of the age – visible, urban leaders, figureheads who are a much better fit in a world of 24-hour news and the need for celebrity visibility. The forays of former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg into public health – the bans on smoking and trans-fats, and attempts to limit fizzy drink sizes – have inspired mayors the world over to intervene in health policy without fear of being accused of nannying.
Mayors who act as state governors are more powerful than Bloomberg, but few have his influence, says Tann vom Hove, a senior fellow at the City Mayors Foundation, an international think tank. “The previous mayor of Mexico City [Marcelo Ebrard] legalised abortion and introduced gay marriage – things the mayor of New York can’t do. And the Berlin mayor can block federal legislation.”
But the more colourful mayors also bring controversy and notoriety:
- San Diego mayor Bob Filner was accused of sexual harassment by 13 women
- Toronto mayor Rob Ford denied
- allegations that he was filmed smoking crack cocaine
- Montreal mayor Michael Applebaum resigned after his arrest on 14 fraud charges
- Anthony Weiner’s mayoral campaign in New York was dealt a blow by two sexting scandals
Many mayors operating on smaller budgets have left their mark on history for better reasons.
Teddy Kollek, who served as Jerusalem mayor for nearly 30 years, was described as the most influential Jewish builder of the city since Herod the Great in Biblical times. He took office in 1965 and advocated Arab-Jewish co-existence. I interviewed him once in his Jerusalem office, where he was told me that Jerusalem was a better city united than divided.
And Pasqual Maragall was one of a succession of mayors in Barcelona who transformed the city in the post-dictatorship era. Think too of Willy Brandt, who led West Berlin through the city’s dark days and later became Chancellor.
Mayors can be more effective than national politicians because there is less posturing. If you govern a city of ten million people, you have to make sure everything is working and the police are on the streets. They’re not highly political acts, they’re done by conservatives, labour, republicans, democrats and socialists in the same way.
Political theorist Benjamin Barber takes this argument a step further in his book, If Mayors Ruled The World. He says mayors are far better at addressing global issues than heads of nation states. Countries are dysfunctional in global relations, he argues, because they’re walled states with borders strengthened by sovereignty and national culture. “National political figures adhere to great historical norms and political ideologies, but mayors have to fix things – they have to pick up the garbage and fix the sewer. They’re problem solvers and that’s what makes them pragmatic.”
And now that a majority of the world’s population is found in urban areas, perhaps this will be the century of the city – and the mayor. Tokyo is the largest city in the world – the only mega-city in a developed economy. The area accommodates 34 million people – a population bigger than many countries. One mayor runs that city.
Another runs Mexico City – a city that has expanded ten-fold in population and area in the last 50 years, and now generates a quarter of Mexico’s total wealth. It’s the perfect example of the rise of the city state. As global populations fast become city dwellers, mayors will become the leaders that most affect our lives. From the air we breathe to the way we work to the water we drink, the cars we drive, the houses we live in and to where our waste ends up.
Mayors are often more grounded, more focused, more connected and more interesting than their national counterparts who, very often, they go on to replace. But they aren’t working alone. These leaders are taking their cities into the next century. India’s capital, New Delhi, is run by Sheila Dikshit. She sees herself as a chief executive, not a mayor of a city of 14 million people. It is a city in transition, trying not to be. As Dalrymple put it, Dehli is “a city disjointed in time but rather a modern city, a ‘megalopolis’ to rival Bangalore”.
So what should a future city look like?
Well, according to Dikshit: “When you look at a world-class city, it should be neat, clean, spic and span, with good amenities, wide roads and should be aesthetically well developed. And, of course, intellectually sharp, something that attracts, that has a soul, culture and intellectual happenings.”
The United Nations and its numerous agencies, along with the World Health Organization, the World Bank and other international bodies, have all established guidelines that stress the importance of cities. Wealthy São Paulo, with its 42 million inhabitants, has made the most of this opportunity. Its governor, Geraldo Alckmin, has signed more international agreements (50 per year), received more foreign delegations (on average 450 per year) and managed more international co-operation programmes than any other regional governor in Latin America.
So cities are the future and the future is in the hands of the men and women who lead those cities. One such leader is Walter Veltroni, the jazz-loving, ex-communist and one-time highly visible mayor of Rome. He saw the city as a global player. “The city is taking a leadership role when you think of happening cities.”
Since becoming mayor in 2001, Veltroni, now 50, has been creating a new identity for the capital. His recipe: a mixture of cultural, social and technical initiatives, as well as architectural plans that promise to give the city a facelift. As a former newspaper editor and communications director, he understands the value of visibility. Rome’s has been boosted by high-profile events, like free concerts using the Colosseum as a backdrop, that have drawn hundreds of thousands. Veltroni is a typically charismatic city leader and representative of many others. A growing number of mayors see their job as promoting business-friendly environments and selling their cities abroad.
The mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, boasts about promoting a ‘concierge’ service for companies. Mayors are competitive people and desperately want their cities to succeed.
Now that cities house more than half of humanity they can become more internationalist and inclined towards bottom-up solutions than states. Cities could become, in the words of Benjamin Barber, the “building blocks” of a form of global governance enshrined in a “parliament of mayors”. That’s because mayors often lead better than parties because parties are all too frequently locked in ideological death struggles.
Mayors step in where others fear to tread to tackle economic and social problems on their own. And it works. The claim is echoed in the words of Rio de Janeiro’s mayor Eduardo Paes, that the leaders of cities have the “political position to really change people’s lives”.
In the developing world, more than a million people move to cities every five days and those cities need great leaders who are businessmen more than politicians. In 1892 Joseph Chamberlain, a retired mayor of Birmingham in Britain, likened the governments of cities to a joint stock or co-operative enterprise in which every citizen is a shareholder and of which the dividends are receivable in the improved health and the increase in the comfort and happiness of the community.
That’s a pretty good manifesto for the best-run cities and the mayors who lead them.
