City Politics

Political Leadership

A city is unlikely to embrace green politics unless there is strong support and leadership coming from the local government. In particular, a number of studies have found the existence of one or two key city officials who are willing to take up the cause of city greening to be a crucial factor in the success of green city policies. This key supporter is often the mayor. Many of the cities that have adopted far-reaching city greening policies are led by strong mayors who have made urban greening a priority. Mayors in cities with a strong-mayor system—a political system in which the mayor is elected separately from the city council and in which he or she has significant independence and legal power in determining the direction of city development and policies—are often able to use this power to direct the city in a greener direction. Strong mayoral leadership is seen by many as key to putting greening on the city's agenda, keeping it there, and making sure that there is adequate follow-through to put adopted environmental policies into practice. In cities such as Chicago, for example, the mayor has been by far the loudest voice calling for and ensuring the implementation of strategies of urban greening and, indeed, has made green city politics a cornerstone of his mayoralty. However, many cities with weak-mayor systems—systems in which the mayor holds a largely symbolic position, if there even is one, and the city council possesses both legislative and executive authority—have also moved toward greening. Yet in such cities, many assert, the importance of leadership remains. In cities without a strong mayor there is often an outspoken and consistent leader within the city council who takes up the cause of promoting and implementing green policies.

Business Support

Another important element of the politics of city greening is the role of local businesses. The growing support of business for such programs is a notable change from previous decades. For many years, particularly in the United States, environmental activists saw the national level as the most useful political scale on which to promote their agenda. The local [Page 85]businesses whose environmental practices activists were often trying to change were seen as too powerful and as wielding too much control over local government to be regulated or transformed by policies initiated at the city level. However, this dynamic has changed over recent years in two profound ways. One has been the weakening of some of the most vocal business resistance to local environment regulation. The second and related dynamic is the active and growing support among emerging types of businesses in postindustrial cities for city environmental policies.

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