--- description: Big City Bosses title: Big City Bosses image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [World](/section/world/) # Big City Bosses by [Andrea Gerlin](/author/andrea-gerlin/) May 8, 2005 4:00 AM CUT by [Andrea Gerlin](/author/andrea-gerlin/) May 8, 2005 4:00 AM CUT Walter Veltroni really gets around. During a typical working day recently, the mayor of Rome started with a visit to a children’s hospital in the morning, attended a groundbreaking ceremony at a center for the homeless in the afternoon, and then dropped in on an outpatient rehabilitation clinic on the other side of town before the day was through. The gangly, bespectacled Veltroni, 49, may look like an economics professor, but some Romans call him the Plumber because of his hands-on approach to governing the Italian capital. Like an actual plumber, though, Veltroni isn’t always available when people need him, so he’s set up a network of municipal employees and volunteers who make the house calls he’s not able to make himself. As part of the Solidarity Pony Express, a new assistance program for senior citizens, some 500 young people hop onto their scooters every day to deliver food, medicine or company to the elderly. In another initiative, about 3,000 mostly retired people fan out across schools and parks to keep a watchful eye on children. “We want to show that in a huge metropolis, you can also be a community,” says Veltroni, sitting in his frescoed office at the Palazzo Senatorio, overlooking the ruins of the Forum. Across Europe, mayors like Veltroni are shaking up the way big cities are run — and as a result are enjoying views national politicians can only dream of. Veltroni’s approval ratings, for example, bounce between 60% and 80%, while center-left leader Romano Prodi and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi struggle to reach 50%. Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë consistently tops polls of the French public’s favorite elected officials. In Berlin, Klaus Wowereit remains the city’s most popular politician, despite tackling a massive debt burden by making dramatic budget cuts. And in Stockholm, Annika Billström has many fans among minority and low-income groups notwithstanding her Social Democratic Party’s poor showing. Even London’s quarrelsome mayor Ken Livingstone, who’s regularly embroiled in spats with the media and was once expelled from his own party, handily won re-election last year despite introducing a controversial $10 congestion charge for cars entering the city center. The reason for this popularity is simple: mayors matter. Leave the grand visions to presidents and prime ministers; mayors are judged by their ability to pick up the trash, get traffic moving, deal with housing and commercial development, control crime, and convince their constituents — as well as tourists and investors — that their cities are best. Action, not image, is what counts with city dwellers, who now make up three out of every four Europeans. Fiorello LaGuardia, the legendary mayor of New York City from 1934-45, had a saying: There is no Republican, no Democratic, no Socialist way to clean a street or build a sewer, just a right way and a wrong way. These five remarkable mayors embrace a similar philosophy: innovation means more than ideology, pragmatism more than partisanship. Veltroni, Billström, Livingstone, Wowereit and Delanoë face plenty of challenges in putting their practical innovations to work. They have to find creative ways to restore the sense of community that’s often lost in the tangle of big-city life, to provide affordable housing for people on low or middle incomes, to ease road congestion and improve public transport, to manage tight municipal finances while enhancing quality of life. As more mayors across Europe are directly elected, the office is taking on increasing clout and visibility, and gaining powers that were previously the preserve of national governments. “To give vision and focus to a city, you need to invest in one person the authority to run the city,” says Peter John, an expert on urban policy at the University of Manchester, England. “As cities become more competitive with each other, they need these figures to lead them.” Meet the mayors who are providing Europe’s most visionary leadership. Walter Veltroni / Rome The Action Man For Veltroni, the best way to run a city is to be seen and heard — as often as possible. “He’s always among the people,” says Francesca Filippi, who’s covered city hall for 15 years for the Rome daily Il Messaggero. “You don’t meet anyone who hasn’t met him somewhere, sometime. He’s literally everywhere.” Veltroni even makes a cameo appearance in Ian McEwan’s new bestselling book, Saturday, when the protagonist flashes back to a fond memory of “a quiet, civilized man, with a passion for jazz” opening a medical conference in Rome. Veltroni, a member of the Left Democratic Party, became Rome’s second directly elected mayor in 2001\. Before the introduction of direct elections in 1993, the city council chose the mayor, encouraging a culture in which ambitious politicians devoted more energy to backroom wheeling and dealing than to making their voices heard in the piazzas. That could never be said of Veltroni, whose childhood hero, Robert F. Kennedy, inspired his career in public service. On his watch, the city’s cultural life is flourishing, public services are improving — and Romans are giving him credit for it. Holding free concerts at the Colosseum every year — featuring superstars like Paul McCartney and Simon and Garfunkel — has been a huge hit. Veltroni has his opponents. Antonio Tajani of the Forza Italia party admits this kind of event is effective, but insists Veltroni is more show than substance. He’s neglected more serious issues, Tajani argues, most notably the city’s growing public debt, which has climbed from less than €6 billion to around €7 billion since Veltroni took office. “His popularity is ephemeral,” says Tajani. “He is more concerned with promoting his public image than resolving the real problems of the city.” Veltroni defends his handling of city finances, noting the city maintains a top municipal credit rating. And he is convinced that his brand of up-close-and-personal politics is essential to restoring a sense of community and common purpose in big cities. “This is actually the way to govern,” he says. “It’s important that the people have actual physical contact with their mayor. This is a way for people to participate in the civic life of their community.” Ken Livingstone / London The Traffic Cop Sitting in his office in city hall, a postmodernist protuberance on the River Thames opposite the Tower of London, Ken Livingstone is entitled to a laugh at the expense of his many critics. He’s at the peak of a political career that’s spanned more than half of his 59 years. After a decade in local government, the Labour politician was elected head of the Greater London Council (glc), as the capital’s governing body was then known, in 1981\. Newspapers dubbed him Red Ken for sensationalist policies like declaring London a “nuclear-free zone.” Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher disbanded the glc in 1986, but a year later Livingstone won a seat in Parliament, which he held for 14 years. Before London’s first mayoral election in 2000, Livingstone was ejected from the Labour Party for breaking his promise not to oppose the party’s official candidate — whom he subsequently trounced. Re-elected to a second term last June, the mayor can afford to be amused that his most contentious policy to date — initiating a fee scheme for vehicles entering central London — has also been his most successful. “The congestion charge is the only thing I’ve done in 33 years in public life that turned out better than I hoped,” he says. Before the charge was implemented, London, like many European cities, was heading inexorably toward gridlock. At rush hour, bridges looked like parking lots, and pedestrians moved as fast as cars on some of the busiest streets. So Livingstone introduced a congestion-charging scheme that taxes drivers almost $10 a day to enter the city’s central zone. Now vehicles flow much more freely, congestion in the zone has dropped and traffic delays are down by 30%. To alleviate the extra strain on public transport, London is investing $19 billion in its bus, underground, road and rail systems over the next five years. But the scheme has not been an unqualified success. A report commissioned by retailer John Lewis suggests the charge has reduced sales at its Oxford Street branch by 5.5%; the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry says 42% of the 334 retailers it surveyed blamed the charge for a drop in their business. “There is a disputed result in terms of the London economy, but an undisputed result in terms of reducing traffic,” says Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics. The charge hasn’t raised as much money to invest in public transport as projected, either. The first year’s take was $127 million, just two-thirds of the expected $190 million, and not enough to avoid fare hikes. Livingstone is loathed and liked in almost equal measure, but many Londoners balk at his pledge to raise the congestion charge 60% to around $15 in July. Nevertheless, he has set the gold standard for audacity in tackling a problem that plagues all major European cities. And he plans to seek a third term in 2008 so he can complete London’s transport overhaul. “I’d like to push that through,” he says, “and demonstrate that somebody can get projects done on time and and on budget.” Annika Billstrom / Stockholm The Homemaker Outwardly at least, Annika Billström doesn’t match the stereotypical image of a hard-nosed big-city mayor. A slender woman, Billström, a 49-year-old Social Democrat, found out how pervasive that image is when she was elected to the top position in the Swedish capital. “In the beginning I met a lot of resistance” as Stockholm’s first female mayor, she recalls. “Many doubted my ability to do the job. ‘Will she really be able to cope, that little girl?’ they said. They questioned whether I had sufficient determination to realize my intentions.” Nobody is asking that question now. A loyal party soldier whose first job was as assistant treasurer at the Social Democrats’ headquarters, Billström rose through the ranks and in 2002 ousted a conservative regime from Stockholm’s city hall. Like Rome’s Veltroni, she believes in accessibility: every Thursday she gets out of the office to meet and greet Stockholmers in schools and workplaces. She even writes her own blog at . “It’s not enough to receive a report from an official,” she says. “I must experience it myself.” Accessibility — of affordable housing — is one of Billström’s biggest challenges. Stockholm, like many cities in Europe, faces rising demand for housing coupled with stagnant or tightening supplies, a crunch that has forced prices up and increasingly put home ownership out of reach of all but affluent residents. The population of Stockholm grew by around 11% in the 1990s, from 674,000 to 750,000, and some 100,000 people were waiting for housing in the city when Billström took office. She’s pledged by 2006 to provide 20,000 new homes for rental and ownership in price ranges that students and lower-income workers can afford. “There is plenty of space in Stockholm, so it is up to developers to build,” she says. Trouble is, not everyone agrees. Claes Trygger, a leading Stockholm environmentalist, calls Billström “desperate” in her efforts to meet election promises. “Desperation cannot, however, excuse what’s going on,” he says. According to Trygger, the mayor’s plans to build on land abutting Stockholm’s National Park would violate laws designed to protect the city’s green spaces. Trygger, who represents the Union for the EcoPark, a collection of 50 Swedish environmental associations, wants the remaining open land in central Stockholm to be preserved for recreational purposes. Instead, Billström should look outside the center for available building sites, he argues. Other mayors face a real challenge in maintaining affordable housing within city limits as real-estate prices soar and young families are drawn, often reluctantly, to cheaper digs in sprawling suburbs. Getting them back requires not only schemes to encourage construction and subsidize access, but also to settle them in cities with enough parks, childcare centers and schools. Billström knows this well, and dismisses Trygger’s protests. “Stockholm’s green profile is a vital policy,” she says, “and we’ve already made a major effort to clean up the city and improve the open spaces, but there are always people who oppose new developments.” Billström’s commitment to affordable housing stems, she says, from her childhood as one of six children of a single mother. “We have to support those people who have come on hard times,” she says, “and to make sure that, irrespective of background, everyone gets the best possible start in life.” Klaus Wowereit / Berlin The Glamour Guy When money is tight, the conventional response is to cut back on frivolous expenditure. Klaus Wowereit, the mayor of Berlin, is anything but conventional. Long-term population loss has ravaged municipal finances since reunification in 1990\. The divided East Berlin and West Berlin received hefty subsidies from their respective cold-war governments, but when the Wall came down in 1989, East Germany simply disappeared and the German government, then in Bonn, ended subsidies to West Berlin. Some 100,000 jobs there disappeared and 30,000 Berliners moved to the suburbs, draining the tax base and pushing the city’s debt up to €59.4 billion. Wowereit, 51, a member of the Social Democratic party (spd), was forced to close swimming pools, ask teachers to work longer hours without more pay, impose a hiring freeze for some municipal employees, and consolidate the city’s three opera houses. But at the same time, Wowereit has been investing in Berlin as what the mayor describes as a “city of glamour.” When Universal Music moved its German headquarters from Hamburg to Berlin, he grabbed the chance to bolster Berlin as a city of music, culture and creativity. He lured the annual youth fashion trade show, Bread & Butter, away from Cologne, and he encouraged Hollywood directors to shoot films like The Bourne Supremacy and the upcoming Mission Impossible III in the capital. These moves have helped Berlin’s economy, but it’s the cachet Wowereit’s after. “The most decisive aspect is to bring creative young people to Berlin,” he says. “I like to compare Berlin to London in the swinging 1980s. London was in a bad economic situation but had a great deal of creativity and a positive mood.” And Berliners are starting to feel more positive about their city, too. Wowereit’s promotion of everything from techno parades to nights out at the opera has given Berliners a new appreciation of the capital’s cultural richness. And that’s having a knock-on effect in bringing visitors to the city. In 2004, almost 6 million tourists came to Berlin, nearly 19% more than in 2003\. “Wowereit’s strength lies in the fact that he’s not timid in dealing with the media,” says Nicolas Zimmer of the opposition Christian Democratic Union. “He can sell issues.” It doesn’t hurt his sales pitch that he’s lived in Berlin all his life. Raised in the Lichtenrade district near the Berlin Wall, Wowereit was the first member of his family to go to high school, an opportunity he has always attributed to the education policies of the spd. He joined the party at 18, and rocketed through the ranks. At 31, he became the city’s youngest municipal councillor in Berlin’s Tempelhof district, and in 1995 he was elected to the city’s parliament. In June 2001, Wowereit took his biggest, and bravest, step yet. Worried that a tabloid newspaper was about to publish details of his personal life, he proudly declared in a televised speech that, “I’m gay, and that’s a good thing.” Until then such openness had been unprecedented in Germany, and Wowereit was the first top politician in the country to out himself as being homosexual. After the speech, the spd formally nominated him as its mayoral candidate and later that week — after a financial scandal toppled the city’s conservative-led government — Wowereit took over as acting mayor. Though Wowereit remains personally popular, many people criticize his financial management. He is seeking money from the federal government, arguing that it’s simply not possible to dig Berlin out of its current hole. But critics say the mayor has made that hole deeper by devoting just 1% of the budget this year to economic development, less than is spent on subsidizing culture and sports, and allowing the expansion of Schönefeld airport — a key factor in attracting foreign investment — to be delayed by planning blunders. “It’s a mistake to focus so much on service industries and not do more to strengthen the city’s industrial base,” says Dieter Vesper, an economist with the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. Wowereit shrugs off suggestions that he should spend less time in front of TV cameras and more time in corporate boardrooms. “This kind of promotion is part of my personality, but it’s also important to show the savoir vivre you can feel that makes the city so attractive internationally,” Wowereit says. And since taking office, he has emphasized that Berlin’s economic future depends as much on science and technology as it does on entertainment and services. So he’s a big promoter of biotech and information technology, initiating the €19.5 million profit program to support innovation and contributing city-owned buildings to the Max Delbrück Center, which now houses Germany’s highest concentration of biotech companies. “Even though the financial and economic situation of a city may be bad,” Wowereit says, “you must show a sense of enjoyment in life.” Bertrand Delanoe / Paris The Quality Controller In 2002, Bertrand Delanoe was stabbed in the stomach by an unemployed man who said he didn’t like homosexuals or politicians. Delanoë, 54, is — unapologetically — both. A protégé of François Mitterrand, Delanoë has always had a passion for politics, and the zone of his political activity has always been Paris. Born in Tunisia, Delanoë first visited the French capital at the age of 18, and since then has been convinced that “my life could not unfold without this city.” When he returned to his office six weeks after the stabbing, Delanoë announced that “this house will remain open.” He now travels with a bodyguard, but there has been no let-up in his commitment to visibility — or his determination to make Paris a great place to live as well as work. “I simply don’t accept the idea that quality of life isn’t compatible with economic vitality,” he says from his vast office at the Hôtel de Ville, where a figurine by French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle nestles in neo-Renaissance surroundings. “We see it when companies decide where they want to be: quality of life, quality of the air are factors. Any 21st century mayor has to see that.” Delanoë is convinced that in a city like Paris, the mayor’s job isn’t just making the trains run on time, but improving the environment and giving a spark of panache to civic life. That’s what inspired the city’s White Night, an annual all-night arts extravaganza during which city hall and other municipal facilities stay open to the public (he was stabbed at the inaugural event). Paris has also become greener since Delanoë took office, with bus lanes on many Parisian boulevards and a new tramway under construction. But the best known initiative of Delanoë’s mayoralty unfolds every July, when sandbags are emptied and umbrellas are planted along the Right Bank of the Seine to form Paris Plage, the impromptu 3-km beach enjoyed for the past couple of years by about 3 million Parisians. Wiry and wired, Delanoë stays on the move and in the public eye. “I can’t say I’m a fan of the man,” says Augustin Johnson, an engineer who supports the opposition, “but he gets things done.” Delanoë has devoted a lot of energy to Paris’ bid for the 2012 Olympics, and if the French win at the ioc meeting in July, both the city and Delanoë will receive an impetus that will last beyond the next elections, which must be held by 2008\. But not everyone thinks Delanoë’s gift for sound and fury amounts to much. “He excels in the operations of charm,” snipes opposition Deputy Bernard Debré. “But behind the spangles, Parisians are discovering that he promises more than he delivers.” The mayor’s initiative to consider building a few artful skyscrapers foundered after public opposition; small businesses complain his bus lanes choke off trade; and residents of certain quarters grumble that the city could be cleaner. 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