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
Dynamism and Stagnation: An Outlook
Flexibility and responsiveness are particularly important during periods of shock.
Recent Patterns of New Business Creation
The pandemic surge of new business entries highlights American entrepreneurial dynamism.
%20(1).webp)
.webp)
Saving Free Markets in America
American markets are under siege by interventionists on both the left and the right.
The Presidential Solution to Taming the Growing Federal Debt
Only presidential power can tame America's massive federal debt.
.webp)
The Path Dependency of American Health Care
Health care policies promote the chance to acquire winning lottery tickets, offering greater health care services and product availability (subsidized by third parties) rather than better assurances of those resources being delivered and used more productively.
Should We Believe the Economic Data or Americans’ “Lyin’” Eyes? The Answer Is Yes.
Many Americans are convinced that the economy is ailing and that life is financially tougher today than a decade—or a generation—ago.
