This been declared the age of cities with cities as places of innovation, experimentation and culture. The state of urban politics is another matter entirely. Most regions continue to view their central city  as a place of disarray, danger, corruption and poor management. "The city is a mess", say many suburbanites  from their polished vantage points in their manicured gated communities. This reflects an ambiguity that goes back to Thomas Jeffreson who called cities both, “corrupters of morals” and “beacons of culture”.

Which is true? And why does it seem to be so difficult to run a city that so many residents dispair in their leaders? 

All the world's problems and no resources

On a cloudless September 11, 2015 Baltimore was once again in the news (NYT, BBC,): The African American Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake (SRB), once the youngest city council member ever, who along with State Attorney Marilyn Mosby had become the face of Baltimore in the national and international media, announced that she won't be running in the April 2016 primary local election. Pundits offered various explanations, the most pervasive one being that following "riots in their city mayors are toast," as has been proven before in Detroit and Los Angeles. Even if they, like Rawlings Blake, head up the US Conference of Mayors, are African American with deep community ties and even if the root causes of the urban problems are not local but national (if not international) and even if the national government has left cities starved for resources to deal with these large problems.

Baltimore's Mayor announces that she won't run for office in the upcoming primary after having been weakened by urban unrest

That a city being left to deal with a much larger problem isn't a unique to the US was demonstrated the day following the Baltimore announcement across the ocean when the mayor of a much richer and healthier city than Baltimore had to admit another kind of defeat: In Munich, Germany the mayor declared in front of the world's media that one of the richest cities in Europe had come to its limits in the face of 63,000 refugees arriving at the city's rail-station since the beginning of September unless outside help would arrive quickly. Even this city had been outmatched by circumstances far outside its control.

Munich's Mayor Dieter Reiter in front of a graph illsutrating the refugee influx in his city of Munich, Germany

Corruption and self inflicted wounds

The all too common story is that cities are cesspools of corruption and have created a mess too big to clean up. This line, too, has some veracity: Baltimore's Mayor had come into office after her predecessor, Sheila Dixon, was indicted on felony charges and eventually convicted of misappropriation of funds. After a year with this cloud over her head she was forced to resign at the end of 2009 and banned from office for four years. Dixon shared her entanglement with the law with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, Detroits's Kwame Kilpatrick and Washington DC's Marion Barry and a long list of other mayors, a reminder that mayors are sometimes their own worst enemies.


Running a city, a great jumping board for national careers

With three-quarters of American voters having no or little confidence in Congress the "all politics is local", roll-up-your-sleeves variety of mayors are increasingly seen as the ones abl......Read full article