These Mayors Understand How to Run a City
Armed with common sense policies, three urban leaders are fighting a patient battle against chaos.
Urban leaders have greeted the return of Donald Trump with about as much enthusiasm as they would have for a reprise of the bubonic plague. The National Urban League imagines an “extreme right-wing” administration that will ban abortion, threaten the civil service, and end both immigration and racial quotas. Trump has even proposed building new planned cities—so-called freedom cities—that could compete with the existing urban landscape. Some urban leaders fear Trump’s actions will force them to “go it alone”—to grapple with their cities’ problems without the benefit of federal funding. But perhaps this is less of a problem than it seems. After all, cities have declined over the past four years with a Democrat in the White House. Weaning cities from federal assistance may be just what’s needed to spur change.
Indeed, several mayors seem ready, if not eager, to go it alone. These include Houston’s John Whitmire, Fort Worth’s Mattie Parker, and San Francisco’s newly elected Mayor Dan Lurie. They are seeking to adjust to harsh urban realities by discarding the often-dreamy progressive notions that tend to dominate urban political discourse. They are keenly aware how cities have lost much of their appeal in recent years to fast-growing suburbs and exurbs and are intent on fighting a patient battle against these tides.
As we know from the 1990s and early 2000s—under reform mayors like New York’s Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, Houston’s Bob Lanier, Indianapolis’s Steve Goldsmith, Philadelphia’s Ed Rendell, and Los Angeles’s Richard Riordan—good governance can restore urban vitality. Some of these mayors were nominal Democrats, others were Republicans, but all were effective in enacting regulatory reform, restraining taxes, and, most importantly, increasing public safety.
Continue reading the entire article at City Journal
Joel Kotkin is Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas, Austin
Economic Dynamism
.jpg)
London and the Architecture of Creative Growth
Preserving London's creative dynamism will require humility from policymakers and a commitment to keeping the city liveable.
Do Dynamic Societies Leave Workers Behind Economically?
We need a more dynamic economy that can help workers by allowing them to move where they can best use their skills.
.jpg)
Venture Global vs. Shell: How a Startup Won Big In LNG
The future of energy innovation depends on courts adhering to the rule of law and holding companies — regardless of their size — to the deals they made.
.jpg)
Cut Licensing, Cut Prices, Embrace AI
There’s a quiet and much more practical reform that could win support from both sides and truly bring down prices: occupational licensing.
The Trump Administration’s Venture Capitalist State
Some companies will succeed, and others will fail – but their outcome will be determined by the consumers, not by Washington.
