Editorial: What role for mayors in good city governance?

Abstract

The last 10 years have brought more attention to the role of mayors in development in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This issue of Environment and Urbanization has two papers that draw on interviews with mayors: the fi rst with Mayor Lifschitz, who was recently re-elected for a second term as mayor of Rosario, Argentina’s third largest city; and the second with four mayors in Colombia who were coming to the end of their terms, including the mayor of Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city. Papers in Environment and Urbanization often mention mayors, but this issue provides an opportunity to actually consider their role (along with other factors) in “good city governance”. Of particular interest here is whether this governance is “good” for those with limited or inadequate incomes. Clearly, good governance from this perspective needs to combine economic policies that support city prosperity with good social policies. Environmental policies must address local environmental health risks (and most such risk is usually concentrated among low-income groups in informal settlements); now, they are also expected to address global warming. Getting a balance between all these is never easy. There is also the issue of what mayors cannot do. While the success of certain mayors in development is well established, it is also important to consider what they cannot do or what they can only do when other factors are present. As discussed later, the success of many mayors in Latin America would not have been possible without many broader legal and institutional changes at the national level. It is diffi cult, or perhaps impossible, to know what creates and sustains “good governance” in any city for those city dwellers with inadequate or limited incomes. But we know enough to realize that fi ve aspects generally support this: • elected city governments; • city governments with resources and powers to allow them to act (often linked to decentralization); • formal and informal avenues to allow civil society to infl uence what city governments do and hold them to account; • organized urban poor groups that can work at the level of the city, that are able and willing to interact with city government and to whom city government is prepared to listen (otherwise it can be middleand upper-income groups who are the key civil society infl uence on city policies); and • a rule of law not too biased against low-income groups and their informal economy and informal housing. Of course, this rule of law must also protect community leaders and other citizens from arbitrary arrest (or worse).