The author of this article wonders if dysfunction on the national and state levels is empowering mayors, and city leaders in general to play a bigger role in setting and implementing public policies. He mentions a movement among members towards something called "glocalization" which provides local areas the opportunity to accept global standards, but adapt them to the needs of a specific community. The theory is based on the idea that the nation-state has failed.
"The federal government has basically sent the signal, 'We won’t be resolving any of this for the foreseeable future,'" says Bruce Katz, the director of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program and co-author of The Metropolitan Revolution. "And that’s a somewhat similar story around the world." For that reason, glocalists say, we should stop expecting big, centralized governments to solve the world's problems and start looking to cities for innovative solutions.
Provocative point.
Here are some other useful bits from the article - many dovetail with points we have made in 2306:
Mayors are driven my different motives than state and national leaders and are better suited to solve problems:
"Mayors are, by definition, non-ideological problem-solvers. They’re pragmatists – they have to be," Barber says. If cities don't function smoothly, people’s trash won’t get picked up. Their sewers won’t work. Their kids won’t be able to go to school. Especially in the United States, where national leaders are locked into ideological camps and party-line negotiations, there seems to be a fundamental difference in what national and local leaders can actually accomplish.
Perhaps this is because local elections are non-partisan. Worth a discussion.
Cities are networks of interests based on trade (economic entities as we suggested:
. . . it’s also important to remember that cities are more than just councils and mayors. "Cities are not governments, unlike the federal and state governments. They’re networks," says Katz. As urban theorist Jane Jacobs wrote in her famed 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, "The economic foundation of cities is trade."
Urbanists often forget that part of Jacobs's work, Katz says. But what it means is that a lot of people and organizations, including hospitals, universities, companies, businesses, unions, and philanthropies, are investing money and thought in projects like creating jobs for 20-somethings and making sure buildings are sturdy enough to weather storms. This is what local innovation looks like: regular people finding work-arounds so that the stores they own or the homeless shelters they run can thrive.
Cities are more democratic than other levels of government and have a more tangible identity than a state or nation:
. . . local leaders understand what people want and need far better than national or international leaders ever could, glocalists say. "You pay taxes, and maybe serve in the military, and vote once in a while in the presidential election, and that’s the only relationship you have with the nation-state," Barber says. "Locally, you’re related to your workplace, your school, your church, your hospitals. … Our real connections with the political entity are local."
Put another way, glocalization is a fight to make democracy something people can touch and feel. Cities are made up of tangible things like streets and subways and storefronts, but nation-states are deeply theoretical entities — we have to use symbols like flags and food to understand what they mean. In the same way, glocalists might argue, national and international leaders are trapped in the realm of abstractions and ideas. By definition, they’re too removed from people and their problems to create effective policy.
Its an interesting - and light - read.
