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Tony Favro
City Mayors' Senior Editor
Tony Favro, is a Senior Fellow of the City Mayors Foundation and its USA Editor. He is a retired urban planner and real estate developer. He has held positions in government as municipal Director of Planning and Zoning and in business as CEO of a real estate development firm. Tony earned a PhD in Geography from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He has lectured at seven universities in the US and Europe.
Articles by Tony Favro
| Most recent | Society | Health | Government | Politics | Environment | Development | Economics | Finance |Transport | Education | Culture |
MOST RECENT
Post-Covid, American cities
strengthen economic equity,
resilience and regionalism
Economy: Within a few months of the start of widespread Covid-related lockdowns, US mayors began establishing task forces to help guide their cities’ economic recovery from the pandemic. Many of these task forces have now issued reports. While the reports’ recommendations address specific local needs, there is a convergence of thought on how a post-pandemic local economy should unfold and the role of cities and mayors. Perhaps the first pandemic economic recovery task force in the US was established in Washington, DC in March 2020 by an existing group of academic, nonprofit, public, and private sector leaders, including former DC mayor Anthony Williams. Other US cities quickly followed with their own task forces. MORE
SOCIETY
American mayors defend
moral values in politics
January 2021: The US presidential election on 3 November 2020, and events in the weeks that followed, reinforced the notion that America is deeply polarized along partisan lines: Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, red and blue. At the heart of the division, and its potential repair, is the weight afforded moral values in American politics. American city mayors have taken the lead in defending and applying core values to make systemic change. In the November 2020 US presidential election, Donald Trump, running as a Republican, received 74.2 million votes, not enough to win, but more than enough to reinforce the sense of a divided America. As president, Trump used lying, mockery, bullying, race-baiting, and indecency as governing tools. He brazenly flouted the courts and the law, actively undermined public integrity, and willfully spread mistrust and cynicism. MORE
Ending racism in
American cities
June 2020: The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 underscores how race lies at the heart of political, economic, and social concerns in the United States. The resulting protests and civic unrest in over 400 American cities constitute a stunning demand that the US honor its legal commitment to opportunity for all and finally end patterns of racial inequality. A conversation with Rochester's (NY) first black mayor. MORE
US cities are waking up to
the harm done by trauma
in childhood and adult life
Society: The challenges facing US cities and US mayors are well-known: crime and gun violence, public health, public education, housing, economic change and growth, social justice and access to opportunity, infrastructure, and climate change adaptation, among others. One of the major underlying issues which affects how mayors can respond to many of these challenges is also one of the least discussed politically and publicly: Trauma.
People living in high-poverty neighborhoods in US cities are typically exposed to multiple on-going traumas, such as generational school failure, substance abuse, incarceration, violence in the home and surrounding neighborhood, and teen pregnancy. Exposure to chronic trauma increases the likelihood of negative outcomes for individuals and their families and for neighborhoods and cities. MORE
In the US, cities lead
in fighting poverty
April 2019: Income inequality and social mobility generate intense discussion in the United States. A number of recent studies suggest that people at the bottom of the income ladder are unlikely to climb very far over the next twenty or more years; in fact, they will likely see the gap widen between them and the next rung of the ladder. Poverty in the US, it seems, is persistent, if not intractable. Many cities are inspired by the success of New York City’s anti-poverty program. Between 2013 and 2016 the number of New Yorkers in poverty or near poverty (the percentage living below 150% of the city’s poverty threshold) decreased by 141,000, and the city is on pace to reach its target of moving 800,000 people out of poverty or near poverty by 2025. MORE
American public and mayors agree:
Keep Obamacare, forget Trumpcare
June 2017: It took seven years and 61 attempts, but, in May, the US House of Representatives managed to repeal the ‘Affordable Care Act’, commonly known as Obamacare, and replace it with the ‘American Health Care Act’ (call it Trumpcare). The fate of Trumpcare is now in the hands of the US Senate, which could pass the House's bill without changes, modify it, or ignore it. Until it is repealed by the Senate, Obamacare remains the law. Mayors of US cities have been outspoken in their condemnation of the House's repeated actions to repeal and replace Obamacare with Trumpcare. MORE
More public involvement in law
enforcement needed to ease strain
between police and US communities
October 2016: If a city in the United States wants to build a road, it will have to follow strict design and construction standards regarding pavement depth and materials, lane width, and traffic speed, among other regulations. City codes typically also regulate such actions as sidewalk vendors and property maintenance. Often, local urban planning and economic development proposals require public hearings. Local policing, however, is rarely regulated in the same way. MORE
Mayors weigh up pros and cons
as drones take off across America
11 June 2015: When the City Council of Ferndale, Michigan, near Detroit, proposed a law in April 2015 banning the use of drones on public property in response to the privacy concerns of some city residents, a public outcry forced council members to withdraw the ordinance. Residents with privacy concerns were far outnumbered by residents who believed that restricting the use of drones would “crush the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that the drone era is ushering in,” in the words of one person who spoke to the Ferndale City Council at a public hearing about the proposed legislation. MORE
US mayors look to education
in response to school violence
16 April 2014: The 16-year-old boy who on 9 April 2014 stabbed and slashed 21 of his fellow students in a school near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will be tried as an adult. Law enforcement officials have no choice; the law requires the young offender to be accorded adult status. The response to repeated incidents of school violence in the United States over the past 20 years has led to ‘hard’ solutions, such as reducing the age at which youth must be tried as adults; posting police officers at schools; expanding the death penalty to juveniles; and making bullying a crime. Simultaneously, with much less fanfare, another type of response has been growing quietly. Public schools in at least 30 states now promote ‘character education’ as an anecdote to safety concerns, as well as troubling issues like teen pregnancy, truancy, and poor academic performance. MORE
A second tier of US metro areas
is attracting mobile Americans
18 November 2013: America is known as a mobile society, and Americans move for many reasons: better jobs, better weather, lower housing costs, lower taxes, and so on. The trend to urbanization is national in scope, affecting every state and almost every region of the country. General population movements between regions have also been notable, of course, the most prominent being the shift from Rustbelt in the north to Sunbelt in the south. While the general population migrations receive most of the attention, a more particular shift appears to be occurring among metro areas. Approximately 15 second-tier metro areas have become ‘centers of gravity’, attracting people and capital from other metro areas. More
Voting rights remain a contentious
issue after US Supreme Court ruling
4 July 2013: The practical limits of democracy in the United States are defined by who can vote in free and fair elections. As more groups gained the right to vote in America, especially women and minorities, political structures changed and the way people experienced democracy expanded. Democracy, of course, is never passive. It is both a function and a driver of popular struggles for rights and power. It’s not too much of a surprise, then, that voting - the most basic expression of democratic practice - continues to be a contentious issue in the United States. More
Racial profiling again under
scrutiny in the United States
5 April 2013: A federal court in New York City is considering the legality of the New York Police Department’s ‘stop and frisk’ practices. The NYPD maintains that stopping and searching suspicious persons has resulted in the confiscation of illegal weapons and drugs, thus preventing crimes and saving lives. The plaintiffs in the court case argue that Blacks and Latinos are illegally characterized, or ‘profiled’, as troublemakers and stopped and frisked at higher rates than whites. Moreover, they say, there is no constitutional justification for the majority of the stops - that most people stopped aren’t 'suspicious' in any meaningful, objective way - and that there is no oversight of the police department’s practice. More
Multi-faceted cities preferred
Obama’s vision for America
11 December 2012: Metro America voted solidly for President Obama in the 2012 election. But how important was geography? Were voters’ political preferences affected by the density of their living conditions? Or do Americans live where they do because of historical public policies, many of which were debated during the presidential campaign? More
US debates use of marijuana
and its effect on urban areas
10 May 2012: President Obama’s trip to Colombia in April 2012 threw a spotlight on America’s drug policy. The presidents of Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala - countries that have seen limited returns for their inordinate sacrifices of human lives and financial resources to control the supply of illegal drugs - publicly chastised the United States for failing to curb its demand for drugs. The international focus on American drug policy has resurrected a debate within the US about the legalization of drugs, especially marijuana and how it may affect urban areas. More
The non-profit sector has become
a vital component of urban America
8 March 2012: Not too many years ago, American cities viewed the non-profit organizations working within their municipal boundaries with suspicion and even condescension. Non-profits opened soup kitchens and homeless shelters that made economic development difficult for city administrators, for what entrepreneur wants to open a new store with homeless people milling about? And city staffs often held the capabilities of their non-profit colleagues in low regard, considering them naïve rather than realistic, dreamers not doers. More
American cities fight back against
big government and corporations
6 February 2012: The Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States has been all but stopped by winter and the police, perhaps to be reinvigorated in the Spring with a new strategy. Regardless of the future of the movement, it gave a voice and a face to widespread public frustration. Many US cities also feel that state and federal legal and regulatory systems are biased towards businesses. More
American abortion debate characterizes the
relationship between city, state and the Union
1 November 2011: Few issues in the United States are more polarizing than abortion - President Obama once called the opposing camps on abortion “irreconcilable” - yet it is difficult to find a mayor of a large American city that is entirely against abortion. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents usually disagree about taxation, policing, housing, social welfare, and other policies. But the right of a woman to choose her own method of reproductive health is something upon which, say, Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders of San Diego, Democratic Mayor Vincent Gray of Washington, DC, and Independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City all agree. More
The larger the city, the larger
the gap between rich and poor
29 May 2011: The largest cities in the United States are generally considered to be at the vanguard of social and economic progress. For example, Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ 2011 Cities of Opportunity report on the world’s top cities calls New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles “vibrant engines of the global economy.” However, city size in the US is also directly related to income inequality according to another recent study — the larger the city, the larger the income gap between rich and poor residents. More
Cities bear the brunt of
prison closures in the US
29 April 2011: According to the 2010 US Census, two million of the 2.3 million prisoners in America’s federal, state, and local jails come from urban cities and counties. Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan, for example, has less than 20 per cent of the state’s population, but accounts for 40 per cent of the inmates in the state’s prison system. Harris County (Houston), Texas has 25,000 residents in state prison; Dallas, 20,000. More
US clergy increasingly
active in local politics
1 February 2011: Clergy in the US, particularly Protestant clergy, have become more politically active in the last decade. A new study, however, finds that the public is becoming uneasy with the political activities of religious leaders, raising questions about the future of government contracts with faith-based groups. More
American mayors take
action to reduce poverty
7 January 2011: The week before Christmas 2010, the US Census Bureau released its latest poverty statistics. The numbers are sobering. Forty-four million people - one in seven Americans - lived below the official poverty level in 2009, the most since the Census Bureau began tracking poverty rates 51 years ago. In 2009, 40 million Americans received government assistance to purchase food each month, and 50 million went hungry at one time or another during the year. Fifty-one million Americans lacked health coverage in 2009. More
American cities face new
realities after lost decade
8 June 2010: American market research firms systematically classify the residents of a metropolitan area according to their purchasing power. Each consumer group receives a descriptive moniker according to its specific demographic, economic, and social characteristics: “Successful Suburbanites”, for example or “Urban Working Families” or “Low Income Southern Blacks”. The communities in which these groups live are likewise labeled: “Wealthy Seaboard Suburbs”, “Distressed Neighborhoods”, “Rustbelt Neighborhoods”, and so on. More
Economics and politics of
Arizona’s immigration law
15 May 2010: US mayors who have reacted to Arizona’s controversial new immigration law have done so primarily on economic grounds. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote in the New York Daily News that “laws that have the potential to hassle [immigrants] could prove devastating to our economy. Basic free market economics tells us we need more legal immigrants - immigrants who will start new businesses and help build the foundation for future economic growth.” More
Socio-economic changes may compel
US mayors to consider power sharing
29 January 2010: Several research centers in the United States marked the beginning of the new decade with the release of demographic and economic data. Each data set provides a specific perspective of socioeconomic change and is compelling in its own right. Viewed together, however, they indicate a convergence of powerful trends with potentially momentous consequences for US cities, mayors, and government structures. More
US cities take the lead in advancing gay rights
Youth curfews popular with American cities but effectiveness and legality are questioned
US mayors maintain silence on high-profile racial incident
American cities debate English-only legislation
Critics of surveillance cameras fear racial profiling in US cities
Supreme Court rules against US cities fighting gun violence
American Catholic Church struggles to maintain presence in inner cities
Affordable housing crisis casts a shadow over the American Dream
Supreme Court rules against US cities fighting gun violence
America prefers to punish rather than to provide care
Blacks increasingly wary as Latinos become fastest-growing US minority
HEALTH
Black barbershops offer
health care in US cities
2 January 2012: In cities across the United States, African-American barbers are receiving accolades, not for cutting hair, but for improving health outcomes for African-American men. Their barbershops are functioning as informal health clinics and challenging American notions about how health care is delivered. More
Nothing short of a complete overhaul will cure America’s health care system
GOVERNMENT
16 June 2020: The US$2 trillion CoronaVirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed by the US Congress on 30 March 2020, includes financial aid for US state and local governments to cover costs associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. The CARES Act provides all states with direct funding based on population. However, only cities and counties with populations greater than 500,000 are eligible to receive funding directly from the federal government. Smaller local governments must negotiate with their state governments for a portion of the funding the state received.
Many US mayors are questioning the population threshold for direct funding. For example, 350 mayors of cities and villages in New York State sent a letter to their representatives in Congress requesting that all cities, regardless of their population, be able to apply to the federal government directly. “It makes no sense to use a population threshold for local budget relief in response to the COVID-19 pandemic since the resulting financial and economic distress is a problem in every city, village and town in New York,” the mayors wrote, noting that cities with a population of more than 500,000 represent only 14 per cent of the total US population. MORE
Albania strengthens
democracy by reforming
local government
12 April 2016: Less than a year ago, Albania had one of the most centralized governments in the world. Now, local governments are the most important service providers. The intergovernmental system has been upended by design, and momentous political, financial, institutional, and territorial changes are being managed simultaneously by new mayors, new city councils, and new laws governing municipal administration. From now on, the performance of Albania’s entire public sector likely will be determined by what happens at the local level. MORE
Local government in Kosovo:
Elected mayors are the key
13 December 2014: Kosovo became the most recent territory in Europe to claim the status of nation state when it declared independence in 2008. The credibility of any democratic nation depends on the strength of the institutions it builds, notably its capacity to meet citizens’ demands for service delivery and accountability. To this end, Kosovo has embarked on a process of enhancing the performance capacity of government by decentralizing power from the national level to the municipal level. Decentralization is considered a tool to deliver results shaped by local needs and market realities, engage citizens in decision making, and bridge ethnic divisions. And directly-elected mayors assume a primary role in helping ensure accountability, transparency and responsibility. MORE
Glenn Lewis
Mayor of Moore, Oklahoma, USA
1 July 2013: Tornados, like lightening, alight in a hit-or-miss fashion, and not every community is touched more than once in an average person’s lifetime. One city in the US that was devastated twice by tornadoes in recent years was Moore, Oklahoma (population 55,000). Hundreds of buildings were severely damaged or destroyed when some of the most powerful tornadoes ever recorded tore through Moore in 1999 and again on 20 May of this year. The most recent tornadoes killed 24 people, including 10 children. Glenn Lewis was the city’s mayor during both disasters, and, both times, his leadership was widely praised as exemplary. More
Elected mayors are more
effective, says US study
16 August 2008: An historical study of mayors in US big cities finds that mayors who are popularly elected are more effective than those who come to office through other means. The study, by Andrew D. McNitt* of Eastern Illinois University, examined the performance in office of 846 mayors of 19 US cities -- including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Francisco, Boston, and Houston – between 1820 and 1995. More
Cities are the most neglected
layer of American government
1 January 2008: Eighty per cent of Americans live in metropolitan areas comprised of hub cities and surrounding suburbs. Metro economies account for 87 per cent of America’s total economic output. Central cities, in other words, are major generators of wealth that attract business, labor, tourists, and investment. One might expect that the health of central cities would be at the forefront of debate during the presidential election campaign, yet candidates pay little attention to cities. More
POLITICS
Rochester’s mayoral election reflects
power relationships in American cities
31 March 2011: William A Johnson lost his bid to return as mayor of Rochester, New York, in a special election on 29 March 2011. The result was not surprising considering that Johnson ran on a third-party line and only four of the 1,265 mayors of US cities with more than 25,000 residents were elected without the endorsement of the Democrat or Republican parties. But the Rochester election, more than most local elections, exposed the power relationships that operate in nearly all American cities. More
American politics falls
victim to consumerism
11 November 2010: The recent US Congressional elections are unlikely to lead to a settlement of issues particularly important to American cities: tax policy, and therefore the distribution of wealth; environmental and energy policy; the implementation of national health care; immigration reform; education reform; and federal transportation policy. That’s because elections in the United States – and political discourse in general – are no longer shaped by major ideological differences as much as a consumerist model of governmental responsibilities. More
Tea Party Patriots appeal to
Small-Town White America
20 February 2010: Small groups of fiscal and social conservatives in the United States began meeting in Spring 2009 under the moniker of Tea Parties -- the Chicago Tea Party, Kentucky Tea Party, and so on -- to organize small, but vocal local protests against big government and high taxes. Their name is intended to invoke the 1773 Boston Tea Party revolt of the American colonists against English taxation without representation, a pivotal event leading to the American Revolution. More
Obama promises to become
America’s first urban president
25 November 2008: Barack Obama has promised to advance a number of issues important to mayors of US cities soon after he takes office on 20 January 2009. America's 44th President says he will create 2.5 million well-paying jobs during the first two years of his administration by renovating infrastructure and schools and developing alternative energy sources. More
ENVIRONMENT
American cities save money
by replacing obsolete urban
infrastructure with green spaces
22 August 2016: What do urban agriculture, the dark sky movement, and low-impact storm water management have in common in the United States? Very often these sustainable development practices involve the decommissioning of public infrastructure. And the impetus to implement these techniques often has more to do with saving money than saving the environment. MORE
US mayors demand stronger
regulations on hydrofracking
21 February 2012: In December 2011, Mayor Matt Ryan of Binghamton, New York, signed into law a two-year ban on hydrofracking in his city. Mayor Ryan had concerns about the natural gas drilling technique because of “regulation as it now stands”. Three hundred kilometers away, Mayor Michael Bloomberg voiced his opinion that hydrofracking poses “unacceptable risks” to the water supply of New York City. More
US mayors spearhead moves
to lower energy consumption
28 October 2010: Metropolitan areas in the US exhibit notable paradoxes: high employment and high unemployment; rapid physical growth and near-total abandonment; social connectivity and social isolation. Underlying these extremes is the energy efficiency paradox. As energy efficiency increases in the US, so does demand. As cars become more fuel efficient, for example, Americans purchase larger vehicles, and second or third vehicles, and drive more. More energy efficiency results in more energy consumption, not less. More
American cities divided over
benefits of natural gas drilling
13 November 2009: Mayors have been the vanguard of the green movement in the United States. Their city governments have led the nation in such areas as weatherizing buildings, creating green jobs, adopting alternative fuels, and creating new tools for sustainable land use and development. A new process for extracting natural gas – hydraulic fracturing or “hydrofracking” -- highlights the opportunities and challenges of going green for hundreds of communities in eastern United States. More
US and Canadian Mayors demand
say in new Great Lakes Agreement
23 August 2009: In June 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon announced that the two countries would update the 37-year-old Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. The five Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River into which they drain contain 95 per cent of the fresh water in North America. More
US and Canadian mayors work together to protect Great Lakes
US mayors planning
for green prosperity
21 January 2009: It’s been said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it, and US mayors are intent on creating a future for their cities that is “green”. “Green” is the general term used to describe efforts to reduce waste and clean up the environment, and US mayors see the green movement as a new engine for economic growth and job creation. More
A city’s ecological footprint bears
no comparison to its actual area
2 April 2008: The US city of Rochester, New York State, and its immediate suburbs occupy about 160,000 hectares, or the same land area as London, England. The difference is that Rochester’s urbanized core contains 735,000 residents versus 7.6 million in London. London, for its part, has less than two-thirds the population density of Tokyo. More
DEVELOPMENT
Spatial Planning and Development in the USA:
Economic growth is of paramount importance
Development: Spatial planning and development in the US is quite different from Europe in many regards. One of the biggest differences between planning in the US and Europe is that spatial planning and development in the US is almost exclusively a local government responsibility. Spatial planning and development does not happen in a vacuum, of course. It is part of a whole socio-economic environment. Federal government policies on taxation, workers’ rights, property rights, etc. impose limits on what can be done. But the local government context is extremely important for understanding modernization in the US. MORE
Megaregions are predicted to propel
US population and economic growth
10 March 2013: It’s a commonplace among urban planners and many policymakers that regions are the basic unit of economic competitiveness in the global economy. America 2050, part of the Regional Plan Association, reckons that America’s population growth and and even a larger share of the country’s economic expansion will occur in 11 megaregions. Yet nowhere in the industrialized world are regions given fewer resources and less power than in the United States. More
Gentrification poses a new
dilemma for many US cities
29 September 2011: Gentrification has been a characteristic of major American cities like New York and Boston for over a century, but in the past decade it has become part of the growth cycle of smaller cities as well. Minority and working class neighborhoods such as Pittsburgh’s South Side; Northwest Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and East Austin, Texas are being transformed as white and middle-class residents move in. More
Studies uncover pros and cons
of efforts to revitalize US cities
6 October 2010: Three recent studies on mixed-use development, resident satisfaction with their neighborhoods, and community gardens offer insights into the effectiveness of some of the most widely-used urban revitalization strategies of mayors in the United States. More
American cities seek to
discover their right size
5 April 2010: Mayors in many American industrial cities are embracing urban revitalization through ‘rightsizing’, or shrinking their cities’ infrastructure to match shrinking populations. Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Youngstown lost half their population over the past 50 years and continue to lose residents. The cities’ built environment – buildings, streets, and utilities – far exceeds the needs of the current or projected population. More
New legislation could make
US cities great for everyone
10 December 2009: A characteristic of American metropolitan areas is residential segregation by race and class. “If you give me a person’s address, I can almost always tell you his income, the quality of public schools his children attend, and the color of his skin,” says William A Johnson, former mayor of Rochester, New York. More
US debates the preservation
of recent modernist buildings
17 October, 2007: The baby boom in the United States began in 1946 and lasted until around 1960. Four million children were born each year during this period, more than double the number of the previous two decades. One way the US government responded to rapid post-World War II population growth was by offering low-interest, federally-guaranteed home mortgages. More
Little action as some 160,000 US bridges are considered to be structurally deficient
City mayors must innovate where governments dither
ECONOMICS
Post-Covid, American cities
strengthen economic equity,
resilience and regionalism
March 2021: Within a few months of the start of widespread Covid-related lockdowns, US mayors began establishing task forces to help guide their cities’ economic recovery from the pandemic. Many of these task forces have now issued reports. While the reports’ recommendations address specific local needs, there is a convergence of thought on how a post-pandemic local economy should unfold and the role of cities and mayors. Perhaps the first pandemic economic recovery task force in the US was established in Washington, DC in March 2020 by an existing group of academic, nonprofit, public, and private sector leaders, including former DC mayor Anthony Williams. Other US cities quickly followed with their own task forces. MORE
The ups and downs of Amazon’s
search for a second headquarter
31 March 2019: When Amazon announced that the New York City borough of Queens would be the location of a major new investment by the company in November 2018, the news could reasonably have been expected to have been met with a shrug. After all, Amazon’s promised 25,000 new jobs over 20 years, or an average of 1,250 jobs per year, are a drop in a bucket in a City that is projected to add 170,000 jobs annually through 2024. Even if all the growth were concentrated in Queens (population 2.4 million), the new jobs and new residents could likely be accommodated and major disruptions avoided with proper planning. Instead, Amazon’s announcement provoked heated debate around issues of inequality and local control. MORE
US cities adopt highly creative
measures to increase revenue
22 June 2012: Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s highly-publicized proposal to ban the sale of large servings of sugary soft drinks in New York City is an attempt to reign in public health costs associated with obesity. The need to cut expenditures in public budgets has become acute in recent years and American cities have controlled costs by privatizing roads, parking meters, and water systems; outsourcing landscaping and other services that require special equipment; selling parks; demolishing buildings; laying off employees; and instituting many other measures to reduce expenses. More
US cities lose jobs and revenues as big
pharma companies close R&D facilities
9 April 2012: In 2007, Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, closed its research and development facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, displacing 2100 workers. In 2009, the University of Michigan purchased the vacant site and expected to create two to three thousand jobs over ten years. At the time of the sale, Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje expressed mixed emotions. More
Annual report stresses the economic
importance of American metro areas
27 June 2011: The gross metropolitan product (GMP) of the immense New York City region - that is, the total output of all goods and services produced in the region - is greater than the gross domestic product (GDP) of all but 12 countries in the world. But who would have guessed that the GMP of Jacksonville, Florida is bigger than the GDP of Syria? Or that Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s annual economic output is greater than Uruguay’s? Or that if metro Madison, Wisconsin (population 560,000) were a country, it would have a larger economy than Lithuania? More
US cities expect to be favoured by economic stimulus package
FINANCE
Mayors explore guaranteed income
targeted at low-income Americans
February 2021: In 2019 Stockton, California, became the first US city to implement a guaranteed income program, moving an idea that was essentially theoretical in America to practice. Stockton’s former Mayor Michael Tubbs, who launched the program, explained, “We need a social safety net that goes beyond conditional benefits tied to employment, works for everyone and begins to address the call for racial and economic justice through a guaranteed income.” Other US cities have begun small-scale guaranteed income pilot programs or are considering such programs. These programs not only challenge current social assistance practices but also promise to rewrite the social contract in America. MORE
Troubled US local government divided
over benefits of fiscal control boards
5 December 2012: In 2009, Moody’s Investors Service put all local governments in the United States on negative credit outlook. It was the first time such a blanket report was ever issued for cities, towns, counties, and school districts. To date, the negative outlook remains. It’s an understatement to say that local governments have been caught up in unfavorable financial and market trends since the economic downturn began in 2008. Local governments have cut services and laid off workers, including police officers and school teachers. More
Even Community Land Trusts affected
by American cities’ financial problems
26 February 2011: Mayors in at least 100 municipalities in the United States, from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Los Angeles, California, are openly contemplating bankruptcy. The cities’ financial problems result fundamentally from widespread home mortgage foreclosures that have reduced property values and consequently the amount of property taxes local governments can collect. More
TRANSPORT
America debates how investment in
transportation affects the economy
22 January 2013: Highways and private motor vehicles are iconic features of American culture - the open road, the fast lane, the drive-in and drive through, the independent trucker, the soccer mom, the teen’s first car, and so on. The cultural icons are linked to the economic benefits that highways can bring. Ninety-eight per cent of US mayors point to investment in affordable, reliable surface transportation as an important part of their cities’ economic growth. More
US mayors lobby federal government
for fully funded transportation policies
13 October 2011: In September 2011, a group of 50 US mayors traveled to Washington, DC to speak with federal officials about funding for transportation projects. The nation’s omnibus transportation bill was set to expire in ten days, and the mayors, led by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, and Mayor Elizabeth Kautz of Burnsville, Minnesota, lobbied for a “comprehensive, fully funded” successor. More
US public bus systems face
rising demand and deficits
20 December 2009: Busses are a common, if unglamorous, feature of US cities. Each day they transport over 3.5 million people from home to work, according to the US Census Bureau. About 20 per cent more people rely on busses for their daily commute than all other forms of mass transit combined, including trains, subways, light rail, and trolleys. Busses are the workhorses of American public transportation, yet they struggle financially. More
US car parks amount to half the size of Belgium
US cities realise that cycling makes sense
EDUCATION
US state school teachers face
public performance scrutiny
Education: The new school year is beginning in the United States, and millions of public (state) school students and their teachers are heading back to their classrooms. Students can look forward to having their progress tracked by report cards, and, for the first time, so can many teachers. Teacher evaluations are moving beyond the perfunctory “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” to more detailed - and more public - performance ratings tied to student performance. More
Discipline and civil rights
in American state schools
2 November 2011: Discipline may be necessary for ensuring responsible student behavior, but “the application of discipline is unfair and unequal” in American state schools. Moreover, many student disciplinary practices employed by local state school systems may result in violations of US Civil Rights Law. Those are the findings of Discipline Policies, Successful Schools, and Racial Justice, a report by Dan Losen of The Civil Rights Project of the University of California at Los Angeles. More
College degrees are not the
only pathways to prosperity
17 September 2011: The last month of summer 2011 in the United States brought us a New York Times poll showing that New Yorkers remain extremely dissatisfied with their public school system despite years of reform under Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Republican presidential candidates debating the cost of a college education, sparked by conservative Texas Governor Rick Perry’s plan to offer affordable degrees; Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel under fire from both average citizens and teachers’ unions for proposing to raise property taxes to pay for city school improvements; and the US Conference of Mayors passing a resolution urging the federal government to maintain its current level of financial support for adult education and training. More
Obama creates competition
to improve public schools
2 July 2010: When only two states – Delaware and Tennessee – were awarded funding in the first round of Race to the Top education funding, most US mayors were undaunted. “We will never give up,” former Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mayor Kathy Taylor said of her state’s initial failure. “We will be competitive in the second round.” More
American mayors welcome military
schools into poorer neighborhoods
3 June, 2008: A little-known occurrence in public education in American cities is the rise of military schools. These schools generally operate as a partnership between the local school district and the US Department of Defense. They target poor, minority students between the ages of 10 and 18, especially African-Americans, and offer academic instruction and athletic activities within a framework of military discipline. More
US mayors are divided about merits of controlling schools
CULTURE
Museums draw more visitors than
US sporting events and theme parks
9 April 2013: The website of the American Alliance of Museums has a section titled, “How do I start a new museum?” It’s a fascinating question, suggesting that anyone can start a museum. In fact, most of the museums in the United States were started by private individuals and are privately funded and privately operated. Most American museums are also readily accessible to the general public and most of the art museums are located in cities. More
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