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Urban Britain: Much
like a curate’s egg
London, 23 January 2012: The prospect for urban Britain is much like a ‘curate’s egg’ - good in parts, bad in others, according to ‘Cities Outlook 2012’, published by the London-based Centre for Cities. Its authors say disparities between UK cities are growing. The study compares Rochdale with Cambridge and highlights that there are six times more state assistance claimants in the most troubled neighbourhood of Rochdale than there are in the most troubled neighbourhood of Cambridge. The report also cites Hull, where In February 2008, the gap in the claimant count rate between it and Cambridge was 3.2 percentage points. “By November 2011 this gap has widened to 6.1 percentage points.”

The annual report illustrates how cities with less dynamic private sectors, such as Hull, Doncaster and Newport will find it more challenging to offset the combination of a weak national economy and the ongoing shrinkage of the public sector. “As cities respond to the challenges of high unemployment, a declining public sector and a reduction in real wages, those that bucked the trend and performed well against the odds, such as Edinburgh, Cambridge and London, have common traits. They have strong private sectors, high numbers of skilled residents and large numbers of ‘knowledge workers’ – people who work in professions like accountancy, law and finance.”

The Centre for Cities called on the British government to invest in cities that were primed for growth. The research organisation argues that as these cities grow they will create jobs to drive the national recovery. Cities, which, according to the Centre for Cities, are facing entrenched challenges, will require different solutions.

But a strategy of ‘strengthening the strong’ has also its critics. They argue that such policies would only widen the gap between the municipal ‘haves and have-nots’. An American economist, City Mayors spoke to, warned that cities like Hull, Rochdale or Hartlepool should not be condemned to become failing cities comparable to many US rustbelt communities. He said Britain’s advantaged cities were well placed to weather the current economic storms without further government help. “As the British government promotes a more balanced economy for the country, it should also instigate urban policies that ensure that the most talented people of Hull, Rochdale and Hartlepool don’t flee their hometowns.”

The report Cities Outlook 2012 names Aberdeen, Cambridge, Edinburgh, London and Milton Keynes as ‘cities to watch’ while Doncaster, Hull, Newport, Sunderland and Swansea are described as ‘cities facing challenges’.

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Berlin mayor urges Budapest to
allow ‘Gay Olympics’ to go ahead
Berlin, 7 January 2012: Berlin’s Mayor Klaus Wowereit has urged his Budapest opposite number, István Tarlós, to ensure that this June’s gay EuroGames will be allowed to go ahead as planned. In his letter, Klaus Wowereit reminded Budapest’s current mayor that the games, which have the support of the city’s former mayor Gábor Demszky, were not only a sporting event but also promoted the acceptance of homosexuals. In a statement on Budapest’s official website, Mayor Tarlós said earlier that he could not support the games as the idea was alien to his thinking.

The organising committee of the 2012 London Olympics (LOCOG) publicly supports this year’s EuroGames in Budapest. In a letter, Stephen Frost (Head of Diversity and Inclusion) wrote that the organisers of the London Games were delighted that the EuroGames would take place in June only a month before the start of London 2012. “As such we would like to offer our support for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender athletes who will be travelling to the beautiful city of Budapest from the UK for EuroGames 2012.” Stephen Frost concluded that he was looking forward to attending the opening ceremony of the EuroGames.

The Budapest mayor’s stance won the support of the country’s right-wing Jobbik party. In a statement a Budapest party spokesman said the event should be prevented by all possible legal means because it was not about sport but was an exhibitionist spectacle aiming to flood the city with thousands of gay people from around the world. “Jobbik is shocked to learn that Hungary was pressured from abroad to host the Gay Olympics that in reality are an anti-Christian hate-orgy.”

The EuroGames are organized by the European Gay and Lesbian Sport Federation (EGLSF) was founded in 1989 as a network of LGBT sports groups.

Manchester enterprise organisation
comes out against elected mayors
Manchester, 4 January 2012: An elected 'city mayor' would not be in the best interests of Manchester according to the Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership (GMLEP). The body has outlined its position as part of the UK government's consultation on directly elected city mayors, which ended on 3 January. In a statement the GMLEP said an elected mayor would bring no advantages and did not align with the governance structures already in place across Greater Manchester. The LEP also believes it would not enhance economic growth.

The UK coalition government has legislated for referendums to be held in May 2012 in England’s 12 largest cities (Birmingham, Manchester etc.) on the introduction of elected mayor posts.  It also intends to introduce directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners to replace England’s 39 police authorities (currently appointed boards) from May 2012.

Last month, Howard Bernstein, Chief Executive of Manchester City Council warned that a directly elected mayor could distract from the balance between city regional accountability and neighbourhood delivery. “In Greater Manchester, we have demonstrated that for reform to be successful, it requires a genuine bottom up approach rather than one that is driven top down from central government. Imposition of a mayor for the City of Manchester cuts across this approach,” he wrote.

Mike Blackburn, chair of the GMLEP, said his organisation was currently in dialogue with the minister for cities on a 'city deal', which was focused on an agreement for Greater Manchester as a whole. "The government's current proposals for a directly elected mayor for the City of Manchester alone do not align with this dialogue, which the GM LEP believes should be the focus of any discussion about further devolution of powers to Greater Manchester in support of economic growth,” he added. (Report by Place North West)

Controversial politician to
be next mayor of Madrid
Madrid, 23 December 2011: Madrid Mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon has stepped down from his post after being asked to join the new centre-right Spanish government as justice minister. Ruiz-Gallardon, who has been mayor since 2003, belongs to liberal wing of the People’s Party (PP) and in the past has been accused by sections of his own party of harbouring left-leaning views. He will be replaced by his deputy Ana Botella, the wife of former PP Prime Minister José María Aznar.

Ana Botella, who in addition of being deputy mayor currently serves as councillor for environment and mobility on Madrid’s city council. She has been criticised for her failure to tackle the city’s air pollution problem. Air pollution in Madrid frequently exceeds permitted levels. She has also made a name for herself for some controversial comments. In 2004 after Spain’s outgoing socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced that same-sex marriage would be legalised, she famously said “two apples create another apple while an apple and a pear will never produce fruit.”

UK minister names cities
for super-fast broadband
London, 21 December 2011: The full list of 14 UK cities to battle it out for a share of the urban broadband fund has been confirmed by the government. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has unveiled a list of 14 locations around the country that have the chance to become "super-connected cities", complete with ultra-fast broadband and high-speed mobile services.

Up to ten cities will be chosen to receive a share of £100 million in government funding to help finance the rollout of broadband with speeds of between 80Mbps and 100Mbps, Chancellor (Finance minister) George Osborne announced in last month. He had already confirmed that the UK capital cities Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London were in the running, leaving Jeremy Hunt to announce the additional ten places.

Eight "core cities" have been included, along with locations with more than 150,000 dwellings, meaning Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester and Sheffield are set to battle it out with the four capitals to win super-connected status. According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, each of these metropolitan areas has the necessary size and economic infrastructure required to attract new businesses off the back of the improved broadband connectivity.

To apply for the urban broadband fund, bidding cities must show how they will take advantage of the technology to drive growth, with particular emphasis on strategic employment zones and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Two of Britain’s telecommunication companies, British Telecom and Virgin Media, have said they will upgrade their networks in each of the winning cities, while the state aid will be spent on boosting services in areas that the telecoms firms do not reach.

Away from these major cities, the government is aiming to deliver speeds of at least 24Mbps to 90 per cent of the country, with minimum 2Mbps download rates for the remaining ten per cent. (Report by Cable)

French left fights for voting
rights for non-EU citizens
Paris, 10 December 2011: The French Senate voted by 173 to 166 votes in favour of giving non-European Union citizens the right to vote in local elections, but the draft bill is unlikely to become law as it stands no chance of passing the French lower house, the National Assembly, where right-wing and centre-right parties have a majority. In the Senate, the bill was supported by the Socialists, Communists and the Greens. But French Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, told senators that he was firmly opposed to the bill. “It undermines one of the foundations of our republic.”

Francois Rebsamen, a leading socialist senator, ask the PM how we could justify that an Algerian or Moroccan worker who had lived in France legally for decades could not vote nor be elected to public office. Supporters of the bill also argued that letting non-EU citizens vote and get elected in municipal elections would bring more immigrants into the fold of French republican values and soothe community tensions.

A change in law would bring France into line with other EU countries like Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. Britain, Spain and Portugal let some non-EU foreigners, most of them from former colonies, vote in some elections, while Italy, Germany and Austria share France's more restrictive current approach.

Public opinion is moving in favour of granting non-EU citizens, who have lived in France for more than five years, the right to vote in local elections. While in 2005, President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed support for the idea, he has now come out against it. EU citizens have been allowed to vote in local and European elections since the Maastricht treaty was passed in 1992.

Capital mayor set to become
Slovenia’s new prime minister
Ljubljana, 5 December 2011: Slovenia’s centre-left Positive Slovenia party, led by Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Jankovic, has surprisingly won the largest share of the vote in yesterday’s general elections. The mayor and former retail CEO will now be tasked to form a coalition government. His part won 28 seats in the 90-seat parliament. The most likely coalition partners are a number of small parties as well as the Social Democrats of outgoing Prime Minister Borut Pahor. However, the Social Democrats were relegated to a poor third place behind the conservative Slovene Democratic Party which opinion polls strongly favoured to win the elections.

The parliamentary election was called in September, after Slovenia's Social-Democrat-led minority government was ousted in a no-confidence vote. That vote came amid poor economic recovery forecasts and disagreements between the Social Democrats and junior coalition partners.

Initial reactions to Mayor Jankovic’s unexpected victory was disbelieve that the pre-election polls could have been so wrong coupled with doubt whether the mayor could assemble a government, made up of a number of small partners, which would last the full four-year mandate. The daily newspaper Delo writes Jankovic will have to offer a coalition to virtually all small parties in parliament and the differences between them are big.

City Mayors’ Senior Correspondent Brian Baker adds:
Zoran Jankovic has been mayor of Slovenian capital Ljubljana since October 2006 when he secured 63% of the votes in the first round of balloting. In October 2010 he was re-elected, also in the first round, with a share of the vote close to 65%. His personal popularity helped his list colleagues to a majority of council seats.

During his first term, Zoran Jankovic was instrumental in securing for the city the UNESCO World Book Capital title which it held in 2010. Other recent recognition has included 5th most liveable place to live in Europe in a Forbes list and in European Commission data Ljubljana is rated as the safest city in South East Europe.

At a personal level, Zoran Jankovic impressed French newspaper Liberation enough to be the only city mayor on their list of 36 people in the EU to watch out for which was published to coincide with the beginning of  the French EU presidency in July 2008.

Last August, Zoran Jankovic told City Mayors that he was personally most proud of the public realm and environmental improvement schemes delivered during his first term. These include the creation of attractive meeting and socialising areas on the banks of the river Ljubljana, pedestrianisation of core city streetscapes and the creation of a new park at a formerly degraded site.

In total, during the four years the city added more than 15 hectares of green areas mostly on formerly derelict sites.  Half of the surface area controlled by the City Council is green space.
 
The bus fleet has been modernised in recent years and new park and ride sites have been established on the outskirts. Bus users in Ljubljana and surrounding districts can make use of a contactless smart card for payment.
 
His ambitions for his second term reflect his sustainable credentials too. “We would like to see Ljubljana become the cleanest city in Europe,” he told City Mayors. “And we will continue efforts to enhance sustainable mobility in the city.”

Zoran Jankovic left Slovenia’s largest company, retailer Mercator, in November 2005 after eight successful years as its CEO. Two of the city’s deputy mayors are also people from Mercator.

London mayor calls on
protesters to move on
London, 27 October 2011: London Mayor Boris Johnson has condemned the ‘Occupy London Stock Exchange’ protesters who have camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral for almost two weeks. He told the activists ‘In the name of God and Mammon go’. The mayor also called for new by-laws to stop people to camp anywhere without being moved on. “We are in discussion with the authorities to stop these encampments erupting like boils across London,” he added.

In a separate development, St Paul’s Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser resigned saying that he believed cathedral authorities were set on a course of action that "may lead to violence in the name of the Church”. A statement on the Occupy London website said the protesters were deeply moved by Canon Fraser's resignation. "From the moment Occupy London arrived at St Paul's Churchyard he respected our right to protest and defended it," it said.

The City of London Corporation, the local authority in charge of London’s financial district, will hold a special meeting on Friday (28 October) to discuss how the protesters could be removed. It will need the cooperation of the Cathedral because some of the area occupied by the activists is Church property.

The Occupy movement started in New York City on 17 September as ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and has since spread to more than 70 US cities and to several hundred cities worldwide.

Love Parade mayor likely
to face recall referendum
Duisburg, 17 October 2011: The mayor of the German city of Duisburg, where 21 people were crushed to death during a music festival, faces a recall some 15 months after the tragedy. After a public petition, demanding the removal of Mayor Adolf Sauerland, attracted almost 80,000 signatures, the industrial city in the Ruhr area is likely to hold a recall referendum next March. The mayor, who has been a virtual recluse in City Hall since the tragedy happened in July 2010, has rejected all calls to resign. Critics demand that Mayor Sauerland accept political responsibility for the permit that allowed Love Parade to go ahead despite safety risks.

Organizers closed the petition with almost 80,000 signatures on it, well over the legal minimum of 55,000 voting citizens needed to force a yes-no recall referendum. A city council meeting is scheduled to rule on 12 December if the petition is valid or void.

Some 21 young people died of suffocation and hundreds were injured while trapped in a stationary crowd between concrete walls at the Love Parade, a techno music festival. While the mayor is not personally accused of any wrongdoing, his critics say that the city should never have allowed the festival to go ahead.

A report in the newspaper Kölner Stadtanzeiger said Mayor Sauerland gave the go-ahead for the event just hours before its start, despite concerns from police and fire officials. The newspaper reported that the chief of the Duisburg fire department told the mayor in writing that the location for the event, the city's former freight rail station, was too small for the expected number of more than one million visitors. The German news magazine Der Spiegel added that an official document issued by the city of Duisburg authorised only 250,000 people for the site of the event.

German President Christian Wulff, a member of Adolf Sauerland’s own conservative party (CDU), reminded the Duisburg mayor that there was such a thing as political responsibility. The German President said while the presumption of innocence was applicable to all, the mayor would need to consider the accountability his office required.

Budapest mayor defends
right-wing appointments
Budapest, 12 October 2011: Budapest’s Mayor István Tarlós rejected charges that his appointment of two well-known right-wing extremists as commercial and art directors of the renowned Új Színház (New Theatre) would challenge the Hungarian capital’s cultural diversity. The mayor said it was time that "the sick liberal dominance" of the city’s theatre land was curtailed. He appointed István Csurka, a not very successful writer and leader of the small anti-Semitic MIÉP party, as art director and György Dörner, known for his neo-Nazi views, as commercial director. Mayor Tarlós is a member of Hungary’s ruling conservative party Fidesz.

Following his appointment István Csurka said in future the theatre would only show Hungarian national drama and not foreign garbage. “Új Színház will produce the works of national writers including my own,” he added.

Budapest’s cultural elite expressed its anger at the mayor’s appointments, demanding that he revised his decision, which was made against the advice of his own council of experts. The council had recommended that the current director, Istvan Marta, should be re-appointed. Marta said that he learnt of his dismissal from newspapers. “I asked the mayor for an appointment to explain his decision but was told that the case was closed,” he told journalists.

Opposition politicians believe that the appointments were a move by Hungary’s governing party to placate the right-wing Jobbik Party, which has been gaining in strength recently, and stop the hemorrhaging of support to the extreme right.

Paris launches electric
car-sharing scheme
Paris, 1 October 2011: Parisians will soon be able to use small electric cars – for a small charge and for short trips - in a car-sharing scheme its sponsors hope will herald a new era in transportation. Dubbed Autolib, the plan is similar to the hugely successful Vélib bike-share system launched in Paris four years ago. A two-month test involving 100 users begins on 2 October. Autolib' should be available to the public by early December 2011.

The little four-seater cars, called “Bluecar”, are entirely electric. They have a top speed of 130km/h (80mph) and can travel 250 km on a single charge. Annual subscriptions to Autolib' will cost 144 euros, while daily and weekly subscriptions will also be available for 10 and 15 euros respectively. An additional fee of around five euros will be charged for every half-hour of driving.

The money will go to the Bolloré Group, the family-owned industrial holdings company behind Autolib', which hopes to have 3,000 Bluecars circulating on the streets of Paris and its inner-ring suburbs by next summer. The City of Paris has contributed 35 million euros to the scheme by building rental stations. Suburban local authorities have also contributed 50,000 euros for each station. (Report by Tony Todd, France 24, and Autolib)