TRANSCRIPTION FOR IF MAYORS RULED THE WORLD PODCAST

Transcription

1 TRANSCRIPTION FOR IF MAYORS RULED THE WORLD PODCAST Bedrosian Book Club January 23, 2015 BEDROSIAN CENTER An applied research center at the USC Price School of Public Policy BEDROSIAN.USC.EDU

2 USC Bedrosian Center January 23, 2015 Disclaimer: Please note that the text below may contain transcription errors. [00:00:00] >> Raphael Bostic: Hello there again. We're back for another installment of the Bedrosian Book Club. My name is Raphael Bostic. I'm the Director of the Bedrosian Center, and I'm a Professor here in the Price School of Public Policy. Today we are going to be discussing a book by Benjamin Barber called If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities. And I'm joined with two colleagues who we're going to talk about this book. The first is Bill Resh. He is a Professor here in the Public Policy School, a junior faculty member with a lot of expertise in the issues of governance. And then we're also here with a mayor. We thought this would get some excitement, the idea of potentially running the world. And so we've asked Ron Loveridge, a long time Mayor of the City of Riverside. Now he's on the faculty at the University of California Riverside. And he is an advisory board member to the Bedrosian Center. [00:01:00] So welcome both of you. [00:01:03] >> Bill Resh: Thank you. [00:01:04] >> Raphael Bostic: So I wanted to just start maybe by having one of you just tell us what the book is. What is it about? What is it trying to do? And then we'll get into your reactions to it. So what do you guys [00:01:18] >> Bill Resh: I will leave that to Ron. This is the second time you've read it as I understand it. [00:01:25] >> Ronald Loveridge: Well, Benjamin Barber is a political scientists, really a political theorist. So I count there are some 17 books that he's been the author or primary author for. He's a very, very, very, very smart guy. This is a book that's attracted I think attention beyond the profession. He is has taken it on the road. If you go to his website you can see speeches he's given about his [inaudible] lecture. But he's also spoken really around the country, around the world with this same message. And he's also taken it to a place where most academics don't. He's set up his own kind of nonprofit foundation to carry his message of talking about a global parliament for mayors. [00:02:27] USC Bedrosian Center 1

3 And he also is not a simple argument. He has many kind of complexities in this book. I would really encourage anybody to read the book. It's a challenging book about partly what nation's states are but what cities are and what our vanity is and what's going on in cities across the world. He begins by thanking 12 mayors which he identifies as his part of the sources for his book, tour from the states. Hickenlooper is now Governor of Colorado, and Bloomberg is the former mayor. But it looks like he went on Skype and so he had direct and extended interviews with some of the best of the world's mayors which gives it a kind of life as you read the book. There's not only academic citations but all kinds of citations that come out of his kind of contact with mayors. [00:03:30] Good to have him talk to mayors. [00:03:33] >> Raphael Bostic: Did you want to add anything to that, Bill? [00:03:36] >> Bill Resh: No, I think it's an excellent synopsis. I also agree that it's a compelling book. It's a provocative idea. I think that there are some gaps within the ideas that he presents. However, that's the purpose of further developing the ideas of starting a foundation or starting a nonprofit and seeing his ideas through. I thought that there was a little bit of undermining the case for the larger state throughout the book and the power of the larger state. But we can get into that as we talk. [00:04:19] >> Raphael Bostic: So I want to because you've got to talk a lot about what he's done with the message, but let's make sure on what the message is. And I think his message is that the problems of the world are such that we can't expect nation states to solve them. We need to create a network that expands beyond nation state boundaries so that we can address these problems. So things like climate change which are going to require global cooperation. He's not very optimistic that nation states will do that. And basically he claims that they failed from the beginning of time to do this. And that his view is that there's one type of body that is well positioned and well structured to do that which is the city. And that the cities/regions create this network, they can do all the things that nation states can't. [00:05:22] So we should find a way to get cities to be the foundation for our global governance structure. And it would be this parliament of mayors. And so I want to have us like decompose that argument. Starting with the question is it the fact that nations states can't do this. Do you think that the basic argument that he makes on that front is right? [00:05:56] >> Bill Resh: No, I think nation states are capable of doing this. And I think that they're more capable of addressing these problems on a global scale than a coalition or a parliament of city officials from across the world simply because I believe that at least in the United States context USC Bedrosian Center 2

4 these cities, these municipalities are creatures of the constitutional powers of states and of the federal government, and highly dependent fiscally upon the nation and upon these states. We had a conversation just recently in a lunch with a leader here at the Bedrosian Center with one of the deputy mayors here in Los Angeles who pointed out that on every dollar that Los Angeles City received, how much, 80 cents was already committed to police and fire. [00:07:08] The creativity of leadership from the cities is without question important. But a lot of that creativity is dependent upon partnerships with the private sector and with their dependency upon federal and state governments. [00:07:30] >> Ronald Loveridge: The point of view of cities and mayors, though, are really now what I call fend for yourself federalism. There's something less than four or five percent of the revenues of the cities come from the federal government. There's cities the states often set rules, but the cities are looking to themselves for revenue. And I think that's one of his arguments is that there is a kind of revenue structure or revenue focus of cities that makes them separate from the states [inaudible] states and federal government but states worldwide. His argument part is that cities look at outcomes. Cities in the simplest way have to pave and fill potholes, they have to pick up trash. They have to deliver services. And they worry about outcomes and not about ideology, not about parties, but rather results. [00:08:41] And we live in cities. We don't live in these abstractions. We live in place. [00:08:45] >> Bill Resh: You're absolutely right. And I actually appreciate that point in particular because that is actually where I take issue with his arguments as his examples on the successes of cities. Very much have to do with production oriented agency activities, not with the craft orientation of major [inaudible] problems that we do face. That is environmental regulations that have changed the rivers from being on fire 30 years ago to clean water today are due to federal level regulations. The fact that there are bike lanes in most of our cities now have to do with the fact that there is a regulation by the Department of Transportation that if you want, even if it's four percent, these cities want that four percent of revenue towards their roads. And if it's an urban road that it has to be a certain percentage of those roads have to have bike lanes. [00:09:48] And, therefore, the planning of the city and much of the direction towards a cosmopolitan type of orientation in many ways has to do with the craft building of the federal government or the nations in which they're imbedded. [00:10:08] >> Ronald Loveridge: I was thinking about this. In terms of states I wrote a piece which was a column in the Press Enterprise that says where has Mayor Brown gone? But essentially the governor's taken a walk on my view on cities. I think Obama was seen as the most urban USC Bedrosian Center 3

5 President in the history of the United States. And yet in many ways cities are sort of not really on his agenda. He's never spoken to the National League of Cities what their urban policy [00:10:40] >> Urban policy which was not effective at all. [00:10:43] >> Ronald Loveridge: I don't' know. I think is it still there? [00:10:46] >> Raphael Bostic: It's still there. [00:10:47] >> Ronald Loveridge: But it still have a leader? [00:10:49] >> Raphael Bostic: I think it does. [00:10:51] >> Ronald Loveridge: But the only point is, again, that I think essentially cities are much more on the their own than the idea that somehow the directions and the funding come from the feds and the states. [00:11:09] >> Raphael Bostic: I'm somewhere in between. Because I do think the federal government does try to signal where they like investments to go and the types of things in terms of trying to use its resources. You think of Race to the Top which is in education. I know it's a state level issue. But it centers around sustainable communities. And those [inaudible] got regions to organize and think harder about how to be effective in that. At the same time the proximate problems are proximate. When you're the mayor and you go to the grocery store and someone is going to stop you when you go for that thing of orange juice, I don't have to tell you, Ron, you know, and say the lights are still out on my street so I need a solution. I guess one of the questions, though, to frame this that parochial perspective, that I don't want people to yell at me on a day to day basis even though someone is going to yell at you about something, how does that interact with the notion of these higher and global issue? [00:12:25] Like there's a juxtaposition here in terms of the balance of focus that I didn't really get a clear sense of that through what Barber was saying in the book. What do you guys think about that? [00:12:45] >> Bill Resh: I'm curious as to how a coalition, a parliament of cities would offer something more, and at the end of the book he gives very much a lot of caveats saying that he doesn't believe that this will lead to a new type of governance structure on an international scale, but it USC Bedrosian Center 4

6 would give a unified voice from the cities that could be a powerful actor in terms of lobbying various nation state. But he almost undermines his own argument in saying, oh, now we have a powerful actor who is going to lobby nation states that apparently nation states were dying at the beginning of his book, but now we're back to a unified structure to lobby them to make effective change across the board. I'm sorry, so that's one [00:13:47] >> Raphael Bostic: You don't to apologize. I think there is a conceptual ark here that we have to kind of get our hands around. [00:13:59] >> Ronald Loveridge: Well, one larger thing, I mean it's more than the grocery store, is that what a city is judged on is there are eyeball measurements. We ask the question how is the county is doing and it's very difficult to say how the county is doing. You can measure whether it's potholes or law enforcement. There's sort of an empirical measurement of how cities are doing that residents have that they don't have of county or states. [00:14:33] >> Raphael Bostic: [Inaudible] that's for sure. [00:14:34] >> Ronald Loveridge: But the one he comes down on particular in which cities have been and the United States has been among the leaders is climate change and doing something about it. Most people live in the cities, most of gases are produced in cities. Cities can step up and take actions that are doing things that nation states have not the U.S. hasn't agreed to and the nation states haven't agreed to. I liked his first chapter better than I do his final one because he is not really calling for a global parliament of mayors, but in effect it's really to share best practices to be able to talk to each other, as you said to be a voice. It's not to pass ordinances. It's not to raise money for [inaudible]. And there is a lot of that going now thanks to Neo Pierce [phonetic] now is writing, what do you call it, City Scope which is a major look at what's happening in other cities and trying to get us to comparatively think about ourselves. [00:15:52] And there is some international organizations which are more or less the equivalent of this which seems to make it move a little bit in toward Barber's. [00:16:06] >> Raphael Bostic: You were the head of the National League of Cities. So you've had the perch of trying to see what a federation of cities looks like and what it can do. I definitely want to get back to that. But just listening to both of you it's been interesting because my first question have nation states failed, can they not solve these things? And in some way I feel like the things that the cities have done in climate change, for example, are not things that the federal government actually has jurisdiction over in this country. We don't establish building standards at the federal level. We don't establish all those sorts of zoning codes and what types USC Bedrosian Center 5

7 of things are allowed to happen. And so on some level, and I had not really thought of this until this, we're criticizing the federal government for something they actually have very little decision making authority over. [00:17:06] And as you know if the federal government tried to come into Riverside and say this is going to be your building standard, this is going to be your code, you're going to build to LEED standard or whatever X, that would be a problem. I mean people would not receive that very well. so it may be premature on some level to say that nation states can't do it. I think it may be time to step back and say, well, what are the things that the authorities are such that they can and a movement being made on that. [00:17:42] >> Bill Resh: If it's okay I'd like to ask Ron a question about your experience. I mean you're the person at this table who can speak best to the practicality of Barber's ideas, right? There's a lot of work in public administration on network management, the idea of network management especially for political executives. And we see from Michael McGuire who is a professor I used to work with has done a survey of various executives in the public sector and asked them about the importance of networking. That is talking with people who have the same professional pressures, the same type of responsibilities and how much value they saw in that. And they saw a lot of value in it at least when they were explicitly asked about the value. However, when charting how much time they were spending in network activities versus the insular activities of their jurisdictional needs, the value of the networking versus the actual networking was quite different, right? [00:18:57] Now, of course, as a mayor politically your job is to network within your community and with the surrounding communities. But the practicality of networking and making a commitment to the Riverside of Mumbai, I'm saying the Riverside of LA, so where the Riverside of Mumbai is, to make that commitment to Agra which is outside of Delhi, which is a comparable size I believe, can you make those types of commitments? And can you pick up best practices given the political economy of your own area? [00:19:41] >> Ronald Loveridge: One of Barber's arguments is a lot of this stuff there's all kinds of networking organizations going on. We just signed last night our ninth sister city agreement with Can Tho, Vietnam which is the third largest city in Vietnam, and talked about all kinds of cooperation particularly with the universities that we [inaudible]. So he has one chapter in which he tries to say there's a lot of evidence that this is taking form. And the problem you identified is a real one. I was talking to Don Borut who is the long time Executive Director of the National League of Cities. We were talking about the international, not what's happening within the U.S. And he says mayors are always faced with this idea of [inaudible] spending time in place X not only outside of your city but outside of your country. [00:20:43] USC Bedrosian Center 6

8 And then he said the other problem often is when they went to these international meetings why the American mayors tend to be a lot more pragmatic and interested in solving problems the mayors from other places can be more philosophical. To move toward the objective that Barber has is not an easy one. It's one of representation which he has a fairly complex idea. He obviously has to figure out finding. And it would be difficult. You're voted on as mayor by what you do for the city. And when I campaigned for mayor I never talked much about what I did outside the city because people worried about the quality of life within, not outside. [00:21:36] >> Raphael Bostic: So can I ask a question about that because that was one of the things that did strike me that in order for the idea of a global parliament to work and be binding on some level you need either one of two things. Either one you're assuming that all of these collective policies makes everybody better so there are no costs to pursuing them. Or that for the cities where there's going to be costs they're going to do it anyway, right? And I understand the first one. I don't think there are many cases of that really out there. And the second one for precisely the reason that you say that I'm the mayor of my town, am I going to allow the perspectives of Brazil and Indonesia and Nigeria to impose costs on me locally? Like how does that get managed? [00:22:36] >> Ronald Loveridge: Well, Barber's argument is this, all is voluntary. You can make choices whether you agree with what [00:22:43] >> Raphael Bostic: So I understand that. But won't that prospect scare off most mayors aside from those who are the most politically secure? [00:22:55] >> Ronald Loveridge: He talks about everything they're doing is voluntary. It's primarily assuring best practices. It's primarily giving voice to the hopes and aspirations of cities. It's quite different from the title. Barber is not really talking about mayors ruling the world. He's talking about mayors really have a collective voice. [00:23:18] >> Raphael Bostic: I want to push on this. We've all gone to conferences where everybody gives a good speech. That was wonderful, that was nice, and then you go back and do exactly the same thing that you were doing before. It hasn't actually changed behavior in any way. One of my concerns is that this kind of voluntary scheme is one that is unlikely to impose the game changing shifts that are kind of implied at the beginning, right? So nation states can't do game changers. Cities can, but to me I feel like we've got to find out what's the structure that are going to allow cities to actually collectively act to do those things. [00:24:14] USC Bedrosian Center 7

9 >> Ronald Loveridge: It's very difficult to see thus far a major role for these international organizations in terms of cities. And I guess Barber's hope is that by sort of legitimating this kind of notion that cities ought to come together, that they would have a great voice not only for themselves but in what nation states would pay attention, agenda setting for nation states. It's a little hard to I'm trying to think through let's just take Barber's last chapter and make it happen. So you gather. Then you've got to have some organization for that, right? And somebody has to do some preparation. [00:25:08] >> Bill Resh: It's management. [00:25:09] >> Ronald Loveridge: Manage it, some preparation, and you have to have some staffing of it. I mean it is not simply bringing 300 people together doesn't [00:25:20] >> Bill Resh: Produce anything. [00:25:21] >> Ronald Loveridge: Doesn't produce anything unless there's some real frame, right? [00:25:25] >> Raphael Bostic: And who sets that frame? I think those are real questions. You'd have to delegate authority to someone or some group of people to be able to create the structure to establish the priorities and then move proposals forward. [00:25:43] >> Ronald Loveridge: Right, and you can't lead for very long. I mean parliaments tend [inaudible]. Mayors you could be absent a week or two from your city, but that's about as much time. This is a pretty quick, stop, right? [00:25:57] >> Raphael Bostic: And to Bill's point if you do that kind of networking for too long [00:26:03] >> Ronald Loveridge: You put yourself at risk. [00:26:05] >> Raphael Bostic: That's exactly right. So maybe we have a Skype conference. [00:26:10] >> Bill Resh: I'd like to get back to one of his major points within his book as well about the democratic nature of local governments and how they are the most quote, unquote democratic. USC Bedrosian Center 8

10 I have several problems with that argument. Because I've seen on a city level, and this is not necessarily your experience or many cities' experiences, but I've seen on a city level many times an economic development corporation that has much more power than the mayor that doesn't have transparency in its meetings, that sets very much the infrastructural direction of the city writ large. I know for a fact, well I'm going to say for a fact and I'm going to make the conjecture, that and most people will know who their senator is, the U.S. senator representing their state is, but will not know the names of the members of the city council. [00:27:28] In many cities that mayor is going to be responsive more to the city council. They may know the mayor's name, but just because the major will be held accountable doesn't mean the mayor necessarily has the power within these cities. And, therefore, the democratic accountability that he makes the argument for is only for those cities in which there is much more of an authoritarian rule. I don't mean [inaudible] but a centralized executive rule. [00:28:01] >> Ronald Loveridge: But he often raises as compared to what? As compared to Washington where you have money essentially dominating the national politics and the election of representatives compared to Sacramento? I think that question as compared to what is an important one. And I keep telling students you teach in terms of participation, I mean how do you participate at the state level? You maybe write a check or something. Or how do you participate at the national level? But local level there is access, to the question of seeing the mayor, there is access. Anyone can come to any council meetings, speak. The neighborhoods actually have some importance. I mean there's a currency of the vote based on what takes place in cities that I think is an important argument. [00:29:07] I've seen some research suggest the kind of views that city council have is pretty consistent with the people they represent. [00:29:13] >> Bill Resh: I would disagree with that in terms of majoritarian democracy. But in terms of protecting the rights of minorities I'm not sure, and I'm talking minority opinions, not demographic perhaps demographic minorities, but in the examples of the cities that he gives when he brings out these best case scenarios many of them have powerful mayors of the centralized executive structure that doesn't have the type of pluralist system that many democracies cherish. [00:29:48] >> Ronald Loveridge: But in cities in my experience the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I always thought I was at one time with the county for a couple years as a council member. When thirty more people came to a council meeting and the city council voted in favor of the 30 people. Intense minorities at the local level have access and opportunities in my view. [00:30:13] USC Bedrosian Center 9

11 >> Raphael Bostic: I do think, though I mean I thought you were going to a different place which is we know that those who participate are not broadly representative of those who live in a place, right? And so the notion of democracy in a city is not as democratic as the ideal. In Los Angeles 21 percent of the people vote, and we know that it's a proportionately higher income [inaudible] homeowners. So you get a different notion of what the public will is if you rely purely on that mechanism. [00:30:57] >> Bill Resh: Also to your point as far as turnout for local elections versus national elections almost across the board the turnout is much lower. [00:31:08] >> Ronald Loveridge: Right, the state election is higher than it is local. I always argue that partly that's the symbolism. One comment was why somebody didn't vote in LA and she said I'm waiting for the next presidential election where I'm going to vote and make a different. Well, good luck. [00:31:29] >> Raphael Bostic: There are many ways to make a difference. And I do think this speaks to the notion of senate responsibility more broadly and people not have as deep an appreciation for what influence looks like, and that it happens differently at different levels. So your story about I'm going to wait until I vote for the president because that's what makes a difference it overlooks the reality of the potholes getting filled in, whether the schools are funded. The president doesn't know anything about that. [00:32:10] >> Ronald Loveridge: In California your vote for president is all but insignificant. [00:32:14] >> Raphael Bostic: I don't think that's entirely true in the sense of I used to be in that camp. But I do think there's a message in the share. [00:32:26] >> Ronald Loveridge: There is some mobilization question. [00:32:28] >> Raphael Bostic: I think the share matters because it's the signal of the strength of a depth of a belief that can be informative. So to me I think that's important. I wanted to turn to this question of the mayor, and who is the mayor and what difference does it make, or does it make a difference, who the mayor is? So in this book Barber includes 11 profiles of mayors explicitly. And almost all of them are in big cities. New York's Bloomberg, we go to Luzhkov in Moscow. [00:33:16] USC Bedrosian Center 10

12 >> Ronald Loveridge: Hickenlooper in Denver. [00:33:18] >> Raphael Bostic: And Park Won soon in Seoul, lots of different examples. Trying to make some statements about what a good mayor is it looks like. I want to ask a two part question. The first is what did you think of the sketches. And then the second is what are the main take aways. Were there things or messages that you got from those which you felt were notable, raised your eyebrows at? What did you think of those? It seemed like every chapter pointed to the sketch. And they could potentially be important. Do you have a view on that? [00:34:06] >> Bill Resh: Having done interview for my own book it's quite easy to cherry pick anecdotes that fit your theory. So I don't I think that they're interesting. I think that they align well. But in many respects I think he gleans over some important facts about some of these mayors, mainly about Bloomberg. There was about two paragraphs in the book about the stop and frisk techniques in New York. And that's 15 years at least of those methods in which once he's out of office and by self selection I should say since he rewrote the city charter in order to get elected again that a significant minority within his egis was essentially in many respects communities were terrorized in many respects. [00:35:18] >> Ronald Loveridge: Bloomberg in many ways his ideal example at least in the states of the international mayor. Some of it is in New York some of it is his wealth capacity would allow him to do things other people couldn't do. He set up this international organization and started off with 40 large cities. I mean he really was the best example of an international mayor in our country. And you see some threads of that. Although a mayor is not perfect. I think going back to Raphael's initial point do mayors make any difference. Is the economy and quality of life in the city different because of who is mayor and what policy they have? I think I would argue that whether you look at cities who have some kind of focus on mayors of large cities that who's mayor does make a difference. [00:36:21] The mayor part puts a frame on policy and part has priorities. And most mayors want to get re elected which means rather than look at simply a narrow base you try to look more broadly across the community. [00:36:41] >> Raphael Bostic: Bill, your comment on Bloomberg raises an issue that I have in almost the entire book which is metrics and evidence. So I didn't see in very many places what he thought the metric of a successful city was. Is it because you get big? And, Ron, you talked a lot about, well, it's easy to know the state of the city. That may be true, but we didn't get any notion of that in here. [00:37:14] USC Bedrosian Center 11

13 >> Ronald Loveridge: He's a theorist. I mean this is a book on political theory and some political ideas that he's trying to get people to think about. [00:37:25] >> Raphael Bostic: But it was normative, and it relied on perspectives that are arguable, right? I mean to say that cities are thriving and the nation state isn't is a pretty bold claim. And it would be good to see some evidence to suggest that that's correct, right? And so to me I was frustrated repeatedly through the book because he would just throw out the economy X is a diverse one and it performs better than LA, right? As if LA was not a diversified economy. And I felt like those throw away statements on conventional wisdom that turned out not to be true. Underlying argument, and to me that was a big problem. But in the mayoral sketches you brought Bloomberg's stop and frisk as a counterpoint to the huge investment, the huge development that happened in the city. [00:38:31] And I think it's fair to ask how should we weigh those? I actually called someone for one of them. So he has one segment where he talks about Mayor Attawali [phonetic] of Lagos in Nigeria. And I have some family that lives in Nigeria so I called them. I asked has he made a difference. Because the sketch was just some stories about he's doing a lot of stuff, right? And it turned out that the city life is much better in Lagos because of him. That Lagos used to be a city of privilege where if you had money you had the motorcade. They stopped all the traffic and let you get through. And otherwise nobody got anywhere, right? And he changed the flow of the city because of his policies and his leadership and has been viewed as a potential next step leader because of that, right? And so to me it was interesting on one level. [00:39:32] These guys actually have been making a difference. He doesn't really speak to those differences in the book. And so I would have liked to see more of that. And then the flip side was some of these guys, for lack of a better word, sketchy. So he talked a lot about some of the, well, to get things done you have to do little back room deals and pay off here. That's an acceptable price for progress. To me that raised a huge eyebrow. Ron, you talked about setting policy and priorities. But it seems to me that the practices that the mayor exhibits, the philosophies of leadership and responsibility to the public at large seems to me really important. [00:40:32] It's kind of glossed over here in ways that got me. I mean this guy from Singapore is exactly the same. There are things you can do in Singapore because you just declare it and everybody just moves along whether they want to or not. So I was curious as to how should we think about those dynamics in the context of a book like this? I mean would we want to have some [inaudible] standards of mayoral governance. [00:41:05] >> Ronald Loveridge: Again, this book if you get to the end or you listen to Barber talk this is not talking about mayors raising money for armies so they can install their ideas. [00:41:23] USC Bedrosian Center 12

14 >> Bill Resh: In fact he says the opposite. [00:41:25] >> Ronald Loveridge: He says the opposite. These are voluntary best practices simply to gather people together for a voice that can be heard. [00:41:33] >> Bill Resh: He [inaudible] say how pathetic the New York police would be against the Pentagon. [00:41:38] >> Raphael Bostic: He [inaudible] say that. [00:41:42] >> Ronald Loveridge: One small thing that I was interested in was how many Presidents of the United States have ever been mayors. Do you remember the answer to that? [00:41:51] >> Bill Resh: Two, Calvin Coolidge and Grover Cleveland. Buffalo and I forget where Calvin Coolidge was. A small town. [00:42:01] >> Ronald Loveridge: Small town in Massachusetts. [00:42:02] >> Bill Resh: But I kind of take issue with that in the sense that he was saying, oh, mayors they don't have ambitions beyond. Well, that's also because until last year or, no, until 2007, I'm sorry, we didn't have a majority of our people living in metropolitan areas, right? And as just a natural outcropping of that I believe that we're going to see more mayors with higher ambitions. And then also he gave an example of Hillary Clinton didn't want to be the mayor. Well, probably because she has higher ambitions. Why do people avoid being mayor, but, yeah. [00:42:48] >> Ronald Loveridge: If you ask people who have been there in an elected office, and almost everyone says what was your favorite electoral position they say being mayor. [00:43:03] >> Raphael Bostic: And why do you think that is? [00:43:05] >> Ronald Loveridge: Personally I was excited every day to go to work. Every day was different. You had choices of what to do with your time. You tried to figure how to bring people to the table. You were trying to solve problems. You looked around and said, ah ha, there's USC Bedrosian Center 13

15 something we should do here. You met an incredible most of your life you walk down a fairly narrow path, and you only meet people that look like you or are working in the same area. As mayor you're pushed out to any number of different groups and people. [00:43:43] >> Raphael Bostic: So I understand why that's not the same as being in the legislature where you're not an executive, the problems you are faced with are presented you in a much more packaged kind of way. But governors surely have a diversity of experiences. The challenges that they face are different. So in California Jerry Brown says how do we get a water supply that is stable and coherent. That's not something that a mayor can actually rule upon. He doesn't have that authority. So is the difference in your view the direct touch to citizens? [00:44:37] >> Ronald Loveridge: I think the leading characteristic of local governance is local access which is not there at the national level, it's not there at the state level. There are a lot of intervening groups and I accept that. That's a valid point. But I think access is the single most important. That's what underlies seems to me as democratic argument. [00:45:04] >> Raphael Bostic: Would you argue with the fact the point that access is better at the local level, city level? [00:45:10] >> Bill Resh: Oh, no, I wouldn't argue against that. I would argue with access to and for what compared to the national level in the sense that, again, I get back to this idea of, yeah, there's lots of good examples in the local level, but at the local level is where you see a lot more production orientation. [00:45:35] >> Raphael Bostic: When you say production orientation what exactly does that mean? [00:45:38] >> Bill Resh: And so where both inputs and outputs are observable. And the more you get to an abstracted level, that is where you get to trying to control unemployment on a national level, trying to control environmental degradation outside of a narrow jurisdiction boundary that it's very hard to attach the outputs of a given agency or policy to societal level outcomes, right? And, therefore, there's a disincentive probably on many individual citizens' sake from their perspective to engage at that level because they can't see the tangible outputs, right? So I don't disagree that there's more avenues towards participation, except the avenues towards participation are much more narrow and much more about there's a pothole on my street. [00:46:45] USC Bedrosian Center 14

16 There's about to be put a homeless shelter down the street from me, and the reason I'm here is to make sure that it's not. It's to deal with these kind of tangible issues that have a very narrow perspective as opposed to a more societal level. [00:47:02] >> Ronald Loveridge: But let me just make I'm not sure exactly, but you live in a place. You ask most people where they live they identify a city, a neighborhood maybe. We don't live in an abstraction. We live in what kind of what's happening in your neighborhood? Are parks available. Is there a place you want to shop? Are the schools any good? Is it safe? [00:47:30] >> Raphael Bostic: Oh, without question. [00:47:31] >> Ronald Loveridge: These are the central questions that you is health care available? [00:47:35] >> Bill Resh: But the wicked problems that Barber argues could be solved by mayors are the externalities that are produced by within these abstract levels of governance, not within the narrow perspectives and parochial perspectives of localities. And he uses as his examples very much production oriented outcomes and measurements as opposed to the ability I mean the purpose of the nation state is, in fact, to deal with those externalities amongst various communities brought together. [00:48:17] >> Ronald Loveridge: One of the things he virtually does not talk about, at least I didn't find it here, was much about economy and how the national economy works, right? You don't see much in this book about economic matters. [00:48:35] >> Raphael Bostic: Which is very important. I think that absence leads to an implication that cities are more cooperative than they actually are, right? We live in a competitive global economy. [00:48:53] >> Ronald Loveridge: And cities compete. The one thing that people I mean I kind of buy the Katz and Bradley argument over the metropolitan revolution. I don't think there's been a revolution, but the idea that regions now are the place where things happen. [00:49:10] >> Raphael Bostic: I think that's always been the case. [00:49:12] USC Bedrosian Center 15

17 >> Ronald Loveridge: And they're trying to figure out how to make it regions now how to make it better. And I think there's some movement in this, moving away from the moded city notion to much more of a regional issue. [00:49:25] >> Bill Resh: And there I think you're absolutely right, right? So you've seen advancements within France where there is now just 50 years ago there were several hundred local governments that have been reduced to just over 100 around the area of Paris. You've seen it from more kind of centralized governments kind of condensing into regional plans. The problem is in the United States we just don't have that ability. However, we've seen examples such as Jacksonville has been able to kind of consolidate on a regional level. We've seen the Indianapolis consolidation on a regional level and Minneapolis as well. [00:50:12] >> Raphael Bostic: I think that regional consolidation is happening more than you think. And I actually think that in California we do have infrastructures that are regional. The Association of Governments [inaudible] which is all the transportation money goes through, those are [00:50:27] >> Ronald Loveridge: Whether it be water and air and transportation. [00:50:31] >> Raphael Bostic: All of those things have been established on a regional scale. The thing that has been difficult to date is that all of their scopes are narrow. They have very specific charges. [00:50:42] >> Bill Resh: And policy level as opposed to [00:50:45] >> Raphael Bostic: And don't have the more comprehensive collaborative structure. Even if you think about water versus transportation those are two different things, right? It's not the same body that is taking responsibility for the entire region in everything. [00:51:06] >> Bill Resh: And the two are just simply very much innately tied to one another in many respects. There's a lot of crossover between those two policies. [00:51:17] >> Ronald Loveridge: I served on the South Coast Board for about 20 years. And we worried a lot about air quality. We didn't worry much about water. We didn't worry much about transportation. We kind of puzzled about land use. You focused on what your call was. [00:51:35] USC Bedrosian Center 16

18 >> Raphael Bostic: Right, that's exactly right. So we don't have a lot of time left for this segment. But I wanted to just ask, Ron, you talked about this to a small extent. Did you like the book, and who would you recommend read it? And to what end? Like what should the expectation be going in to a book like this? [00:52:01] >> Ronald Loveridge: It is too easy to dismiss the book that global parliament, a [inaudible] illusionary and it won't happen and it won't have any effect so why read the book. Barber ranges widely over a whole variety of topics. And I think the questions that he addressed, I'm not sure I agree with this proscriptions, but the questions he addressed I think are important ones. It's a book worth reading. I was trying to get Barber to come out to UC. I was talking to a woman who knew him quite well to come out and spend a week at UC R. I think faculty would find him engaging. I think the arguments are engaging. And I applaud Barber for doing more than writing the book and then sitting down to write his 18th. [00:52:53] >> Raphael Bostic: Without question. I agree with that. [00:52:55] >> Ronald Loveridge: He's working very hard on this. [00:52:58] >> Bill Resh: Yeah, I would recommend the book as far as giving some provocative ideas. Also presenting in a compact way ideas that have been floating out there from various perspectives from new urbanism to political theory. He brings a lot together. If you're a fan of the Life and Death of the Great American City you should read this book. If you're a fan of Planet of Slums I would read this book. The problems, however, that Planet of Slums presents [00:53:41] >> Raphael Bostic: And Planet of Slums is by who? [00:53:44] >> Bill Resh: Is by Mike Davis. Many of the problems that are highlighted in Planet of Slums Barber borrows towards his I think it's chapter 8 [00:53:55] >> Ronald Loveridge: [Inaudible] inequality. [00:53:56] >> Bill Resh: Yes, and I don't think that he offers many solutions to those problems. But it's a good way to kind of see how those problems are arrayed. [00:54:09] USC Bedrosian Center 17

19 >> Raphael Bostic: To me this book I struggled reading this book. One because I really expected much more mayors ruling the world, right? And this is not really about that. [00:54:23] >> Ronald Loveridge: It's not. [00:54:24] >> Raphael Bostic: And that's an important piece. The second, and this belies my background, I was looking for evidence. I really wanted a lot more. And this is really the philosophical theorem of [inaudible]. Now, the problem I had on the back side of that he injects a lot of personal views about [inaudible] and what policies are good policies and what policies are bad policies that I feel shaped the prescription in ways that take it out of the theory, that make it more distant with the theory, and that made me a bit uncomfortable. That said if people are going to read this, and it's a generic book in the sense that it doesn't require a lot of technical knowledge, it's pretty self contained, they should definitely read it as this is going to leave room for thought. Don't think too hard about the back end but really think to what extent are these problems truly intractable. [00:55:33] Or are there things that can be done? And then the last piece on that is what is the city? Because he has a characterization of a city that I think is a little stylized. The city is a lot of things. And he could have stopped before the solution and just said, okay, now what doe this say about what a city is, and it would have been a really interesting discussion. [00:56:04] >> Ronald Loveridge: The more narrow he gets the less you sort of like his arguments. [00:56:10] >> Raphael Bostic: Correct, correct. But I do think because he wanted to do the nonprofit, he wanted to do sort of real world stuff, I think he needed some specificity in here to vent his goals. I think his personal goal is really to create a coherent network where best practices really do get exported quickly. And I think there's real value in that. I think that's actually [inaudible]. [00:56:39] >> Bill Resh: But to go back to Ron's point earlier, to what extent is this formal structure of a parliament needed if these things are already happening? [00:56:50] >> Ronald Loveridge: And that's been some push back on the book because there is the framework that already exists. Obviously it's voluntary, it's not as orderly as he is or as visible as he would like. But there is this kind of framework there. [00:57:08] >> Bill Resh: So it could be just recreating the wheel. USC Bedrosian Center 18

20 [00:57:10] >> Raphael Bostic: That's right which would be unfortunate. Any last things you guys wanted to say or things that we didn't talk about that you feel like we should have? [00:57:17] >> Bill Resh: I think we should just have an interview with Ron for an hour about what it actually takes to run a city as opposed to theorizing about it. [00:57:26] >> Raphael Bostic: Now, we have had Ron on before. And there should be a YouTube video of our conversation. [00:57:34] >> Bill Resh: Let me just have Ron for an hour. [00:57:36] >> Raphael Bostic: But maybe we will do that for another podcast, create a new interview with the mayor series and see what we can do there. Bill Resh, Ron Loveridge I want to thank you both for joining me and talking about this book. Very interesting, very thought provoking. And it will leave me thinking perhaps a little differently about what a city is and what it can accomplish. That's valuable. [00:58:08] >> Bill Resh: And thank you to Benjamin Barber for giving us an opportunity to talk about it. [00:58:13] >> Ronald Loveridge: It's good to have a political theorist worry about cities, too. [00:58:17] >> Raphael Bostic: So If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities by Benjamin Barber has been our book for this week, this month. Thank you for listening. This has been our latest installment of the Bedrosian Book Club. Please join us again. Thanks. USC Bedrosian Center 19