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The Mayor As CEO

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Mayors are often called the "chief executives" of a city. But when urban thinkers talk about running a city like a business, they mostly mention adopting private-sector principles for operational efficiency, cost effectiveness and better customer service. While these are clearly important, they are not the functions of a CEO, but of a COO or CFO. Indeed, two key concerns of the CEO, strategy and brand, are seldom discussed in urbanist circles--but they should be.

In a dynamic market there are winners and losers. Over time, disruptions occur, and upstarts emerge. Many fail, some succeed--and we end up better for it. These same forces of creative destruction apply to places as well as companies and industries. Cities and regions rise and fall. Faced with a marketplace challenge, some reinvent themselves successfully, others do not. Once the Rust Belt was in favor; then the Sun Belt. Once people moved to California; now, they move from it. Today's champions--Portland, Houston, etc.--will no doubt meet the same obstacles as other once-great cities down the road.

But while a high business failure rate is often a sign of entrepreneurial dynamism, is it advisable to leave a trail of failed cities in the wake of our civic progress? It isn't realistic to adopt a "no casualties" policy. But to accept marketplace-like civic failure rates is to envision an urban future in America with a dozen or so sustainably dynamic cities that are able to reinvent themselves over time. Others would be doomed to be flowers that bloom for a season and then wither away, sustained on a steady diet of costly subsidies as wards of the state.

That's why the CEO perspective is desperately needed, particularly for our core cities whose success is vital to sustaining healthy metro regions. Cities need to answer a simple question, one that defies a simple answer: Why here? That is, why live, work or locate a business in our city?

This question is one not amenable to COO/CFO type solutions. While efficiency, cost control and limited taxation will always be important, no matter what our core cities do they will never have lower taxes than the suburbs due to their legacy costs and disproportionately large share of social service budgets and nonprofits. What's more, cities will almost always have more crime, worse schools and older infrastructure than suburbs.

So how do you get someone to buy your product when it has those characteristics? That's the great unanswered question in too many American cities.


Cities do have one natural advantage in this regard, being home to most of the nation's supply of traditional urban style development. While urban living may always appeal to a minority, those who prefer it almost have to look at the city. Trying to out-suburb the suburbs with auto-oriented living is a loser's game (as in implementing strip malls and large private parking lots). If people prefer a suburban lifestyle, they can get a better version of it for cheaper just by moving there. Give people a choice between a real suburb and a city trying to act like a suburb, and people will choose the real thing every time.

But adopting the urban revitalization conventional wisdom du jour is also a dead end. Every city has bike trails, stadiums and such. Things like light rail might help, but people who want to live the Portland or Chicago lifestyle will just move there. They don't need a "me too" imitation of it.

The lesson of Portland is that it found a strategy that worked for it based on embracing traditional urbanism, public transit and bicycle transportation. That doesn't mean every city should copy it; others found different paths. Las Vegas found success with its "sin city" approach. Austin decided to be a big college town with a pledge to "Keep Austin Weird." Charleston held firm to its rich antebellum heritage. For Houston, it's the relentless pursuit of the energy sector, America's most aggressive pro-growth policies and no zoning.

These cities have the CEO perspective. They understand their "brand DNA." They were able to create aspirational narratives about their brand promise that resonated with the people they wanted to attract. And they understood how to deliver on their value propositions. That's the real lesson they have to offer, not cookbook recipes for urban success.

America's cities need to dig deep, understand their unique local environments and create urban solutions that spring from the native soil. That's where the CEO perspective is vital. There is no one-size-fits-all urban policy solution. A great city, like a great wine, has to express its terroir.

Aaron M. Renn is an urban success strategist. He writes about cities at

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