A cities-vs.-states smackdown

Blogging from “The Reinvented City,” in Cambridge, Mass., a conference sponsored by the Nieman Foundation, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Ex-Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and Ex-Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, (both recent president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors) and both spending the semester at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, had finished their talks about how each had made changes and improvements to their respective cities. (Note, I’ve corrected an earlier version of this which didn’t show Nickels also headed the mayors’ group. Mary, 3:30 p.m. 4-25-10)

For instance, Miami 21 is a new form-based code for the city of Miami that throws out the old Euclidean zoning traditions (planners will know what that’s about) in favor of an approach focused not on separating all uses but on the relationship between streets and buildings, pedestrians and streets, all the buildings in a neighborhood, etc.

And Nickels – who spearheaded the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement campaign – talked about his efforts to push U.S.. cities to tackle climate change, since the federal government stalled on Kyoto, etc. As he talked about his lengthy, and probably successful effort to get rid of a highway along the Seattle waterfront and replace it with a tunnel. As he recounted a lengthy process fraught with legislative and gubernatorial political maneuvering, he said, “If you want to get us [him and Diaz] going, get us to talk about our relationship with states.”

So I did.

What, I asked, might be some mechanisms that could improve those relationships?

“Abolish the states!” Nickels barked.

He and Diaz pretty much went off on a tear about their anger and frustration with state legislatures. Legislators, Diaz said, don’t know or care about cities. “If he’s a state elected official he should stay the hell away from what’s going to affect mayors,” he said. The federal government hardly gives cities any money – they funnel it to states. And states don’t give it equitably to cities. “We get peanuts,” Diaz said.

States should realize the importance of investing in their cities, Nickels said, since cities are where the vast majority of any state’s jobs are. (Bev Perdue, are you listening?)

I buttonholed them after their talk, and they were even more outspoken. Rural legislators get elected by basically dumping on metro areas, Nickels said. He told of one well-respected legislator in Washington who was defeated when his opponent linked him to the Seattle skyline.
I asked if they knew of any state-city relationships that were working. They couldn’t list one.

“You create the new American economy in cities,” Diaz said. He and Nickels – and, I imagine, multiple other mayors – are enormously frustrated that state elected officials don’t recognize that the nation’s economy, and by extension the states’ economies, are created in the nation’s cities. The Miami economy, Diaz noted, is the 11th largest economy in the nation and bigger than most state economies.

They both believe changes are needed at the federal level, so more federal money – for transportation, economic development, energy block grants, etc. – goes directly to cities and urban areas and doesn’t need to be divvied up by state governments.