Here is a nice article from Project for Public Spaces which looks at how the mayor’s office can play the leading role in remaking a city and creating a truly great place congruent with a city’s history and assets, with parks playing a major role.
With the election of a new mayor this past November and the obvious need to help remake the city, from lower K Street to the lower area of the American River Parkway within the city limits, two of Sacramento’s greatest assets but currently two of the least safe places for families to visit, it is a timely article.
An excerpt.
“Here's how Joseph Riley Jr.—who has been at the helm in Charleston, South Carolina, for 30 years, making him one of America’s longest-serving mayors—describes the job: “You have a personal relationship with people. You pick up their garbage. You make them feel safe. You try to help them when they are in trouble. It’s a chance to do things directly for people—for the poorest person in town as well as the rich.”
“No one would cast Riley, a small, dignified man who speaks with a soft voice, in the role of a political powerbroker. Yet he has reshaped this city of 105,000 to such an extent that few who knew it in the 1970s— as a poor, racially torn backwater that had lost hope in the future—would recognize it today.
“Riley vigorously led Charleston’s turnaround by paying careful attention to the strong sense of place that characterizes this city. He has preserved the city’s historic qualities, and even improved upon things with charming new parks, developments and attractions that blend in with the classic 18th- and 19th-century architecture everyone loves. Charleston is also known around the world for its springtime Spoleto arts festival, which Riley brought to town in partnership with the famous Italian composer and impresario Gian Carlo Menotti.
“For most Charlestonians, however, these accomplishments pale in comparison to Riley’s leadership during the devastating Hurricane Hugo of 1989. After ordering an all-out evacuation, Riley and city staff helped people flee to safety and stayed behind to protect the city. Almost as soon as the winds died, he launched a full-force program to make Charleston “more beautiful and vital than ever.” The triumph of Riley’s rebuilding efforts can be seen in the delighted smiles of tourists who come from all over the U.S. to wander the city’s streets and in the envious looks of other mayors who come to learn Charleston’s secret at the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, which Riley founded in 1986.”
