Charleston's Veteran Mayor Joe Riley Offers Instruction on Urban ‘Vision'

Mayor, you've been elected as city leader for almost a quarter of a century in the city of Charleston, S.C. Are there lessons you can share with mayors, including Los Angeles' new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, about the value and purpose of city planning? Will you share some of your thoughts, almost like an open letter. to Mayor Villaraigosa?

You cannot overstate the importance of strategic planning of a city. Just as no corporation could compete without a good strategic business plan, no city can begin to achieve its potential without a wise strategic plan that the leadership adheres to. Cities are the ultimate civic creations – they belong to citizens, it's public realm. It influences the experiences of everyone who touches it every moment of every day.

I think what's happened – and I'm not speaking about L.A. or any city; I'm speaking about America – is we developed rapidly in the 20th century in metropolitan areas, and the notion of civic planning was lost. It was private rather than civic planning, because a landowner would buy a tract of land and then say, "Well, let's develop it this way." Well, the ownership of land is sacrosanct and the ability to profit from wise ownership and development of land is very important, but if it is to be a permanent part of the ultimate civic gesture, a city, then it should be pursuant to a civic vision, a community vision.

The debate in cities in the West and in Los Angeles (we are choosing a new planning director to join our new mayor) is whether city planners ought to be primarily mediators of interests, very strong interests – homeowners, residential developers, preservationists, business – or whether planners ought to be the start of a comprehensive vision for the community. What are your views?

It has to be a vision. And it's not a vision imposed. A good plan is a plan that represents the collective vision of the citizens. And that happens in many ways. That happens from hearings and from various methods of input. You're simply not a technical or necessarily a specific solution here. You're seeking a broader vision, and within that broader vision a plan is developed. But if it's just mediating between competing interests then that's more of a status quo achievement rather than a visionary achievement.

And when the citizens are involved, you encourage people to think about the future: What are the highest aspirations we can have for our neighborhood or our community? What do we love about where we live? What do we want more of? What do we not like so much about where we live? What facets of the physical development – our infrastructure or other development that are less than excellent that we would repair or improve? And so you need a great planning director and then, obviously, the political support. But it's not self-imposed – you're not looking for a planning director who's going to say, "Ah ha! I know the vision for Charleston or Columbus or Los Angeles or Seattle." But rather, "I, working with the elected officials and working with and engaging the community, can help shape that vision and then help recommend the tools and the processes to put it into place."

Mayor, urbanologist Joel Kotkin has a new book The City: A Global History, and he says all great cities – and I think he'd include Charleston – have three characteristics: Each is safe, sacred and busy. What have you done in Charleston in the last quarter-century to make Charleston a safe, sacred, and busy city?

Well, I would agree with those characteristics. We place public safety as our priority. We decentralized our police department, we invested in community relations and top-flight law enforcement, and we have made our city safer. You've got to make cities safe because it's got to be a place that people love, they're not going to want to be there if they're not safe.

The sacredness of it is to make every a place that feels special and to give very high priority to the quality of public land – the parks and open spaces and civic buildings – and make them beautifully designed and well-maintained.

And then the last characteristic, busy, is through our strategic plan, which puts pieces into place to generate activity. All cities need human beings, engaged in a multitude of activities. You've got to have people on the streets and you've got to have activities, and you've got to make a place. You've got to make the streets inviting. There's an intersection in Charleston that 30 years ago was a big vacant lot with not a lot going on. And as I drive by there now I and see all the people crossing the streets I think of William H. Whyte and his study of how people use downtowns. People count. We've scarred so many of our streets by allowing pedestrian-unfriendly buildings or uses to occur.

Is the platform of mayor powerful enough to make the decisions necessary to create a sacred, safe, and busy city?

Absolutely. It's the best platform. It's the best job in public service, because you personally serve the people. It's my duty to make the neighborhood safe, their front door safe, to make sure their garbage and trash is picked up, to make sure their sidewalk is clean, to make sure their parks and playgrounds and programs that benefit them and their children are there. So you begin from the standpoint of being a direct personal servant, not an abstract thing. You begin with a personal connection – it is very special and unusual in public office – and then you have the authority that the office may give you. So from the planning decisions, from the infrastructure decisions, from the zoning decisions, from the development decisions, you have enormous authority that the citizens have given you to shape the city, and you've got the bully pulpit to help communicate the needs and divisions. You have to work at it every day. You never take the citizens for granted. You've got to make sure that they know you are seeking to fulfill their dreams, and there are times when it is your duty to explain that – to tell that story, to sell it.

You say that the power and value of being mayor, but what about the federal and state governments? What about federal transportation bills and housing policy and homeland security? How do you deal as mayor with the imposition of policies and funding streams beyond your control?

Well, you just have to work and fight and argue and cajole and strategize, and it's hard. It's very hard. And a lot beyond your control, but they're not beyond your ability to try to influence. And so you have to do that. You just have to push and sell and argue and fight.

How much of your success, and much has been attributed to your success, is due to the absence of term limits in South Carolina and Charleston, your ability to be there multiple decades?

Obviously I've been very fortunate to be able to serve this long. I will say that with one term you can make a huge difference and you can set directions and you can get programs moving and you can create a direction and purpose. But I certainly believe that term limits are foolish things, because it takes away from the citizens some power. If they want to keep someone in office they cannot do that, so you've taken that away from them. Also, an election is a powerful thing. The incumbent, if he or she wants to be re-elected, is always working for the citizens to make them believe that re-election is in their best interest. Also, the absence of term limits makes the citizens be more engaged. If you have term limits, then you can say, "Well, you know, he's not that good but, best-case, we got him four years. So let's go on and tend to other interests or don't get engaged. He'll be gone sooner or later." Rather than the better is to say, "Gee, this is our community. This person isn't any good. We want to get rid of him next election."

Mayor, last question, the challenge for many majors around the country, especially big-city mayors, has been education, public education. Mayors Daley and Bloomberg and in Boston have taken some control over their schools. You've had some time to think about this issue and its challenge for your overall goals and that of your citizens. What do we do about public education as mayors?

Well, if you can take them over, if the legislation allows you to do that, then that is the best option. It gives you more work to do, but the mayor is so accountable that if you're the mayor you know that if you don't do it, the citizens know who didn't do it. But many can't do that, and we cannot do that in South Carolina, so what you do then is you seek every way you can to help positively influence. Two hours ago in my office was the superintendent of our school district, and I was talking to her about programs we're doing with the schools and my plans for the next year and ways that I can help her and she can help me achieve them. I'm going to be in every school in my city at least once during the year, and we've set up after-school programs and lunch-money programs and volunteer programs and community-engagement programs to create an educational foundation. I met with the new principals last week and gave them a pep talk and let them know how valuable they are. So if you can't operate the schools, there's still so many things you can do, and we as mayors and we as citizens have to be more engaged in public education.

We cannot say that our public schools are the principal's, superintendent's, school board's responsibility. It's everybody's responsibility. My job is to be the leader of the city and the leader of the region – I understand that – I don't seek to operate extra-jurisdictionally, but I know that the citizens look to the center city, and so we can't be restricted by just thinking of our charter or corporate duties. We're the leader, and education needs the leader to be engaged.