Official Leadership In The City

The burden of addressing the problems of urban society fall increasingly on cities as the federal government cuts back domestic spending. This book examines the roles of mayors, councils, and administrators in governing and managing their cities. Positing that the internal dynamics of city governments are largely shaped by their structures, the author shows how council-manager governmental structures often foster more cooperation than do mayor-council structures. Svara provides contrasting models of interaction among officials in the two forms and shows how conflict and cooperation affect the performance of officials in the two structures; he contends that proper understanding of the roles and behavior appropriate to each will lead to equal effectiveness between the two.

This work examines the roles of mayors, council members and administrators in the American urban governmental process and seeks to identify ways to improve the performance of these key figures.

Leading Cities is a global review of the state of city leadership and urban governance today. Drawing on research into 202 cities in 100 countries, the book provides a broad, international evidence base grounded in the experiences of all types of cities. It offers a scholarly but also practical assessment of how cities are led, what challenges their leaders face, and the ways in which this leadership is increasingly connected to global affairs. Arguing that effective leadership is not just something created by an individual, Elizabeth Rapoport, Michele Acuto and Leonora Grcheva focus on three elements of city leadership: leaders, the structures and institutions that underpin them, and the tools used to drive change. Each of these elements are examined in turn, as are the major urban policy issues that leaders confront today on the ground. The book also takes a deep dive into one particular example of tool or instrument of city leadership – the strategic urban plan. Leading Cities provides a much-needed overview and introduction to the theory and practice of city leadership, and a starting point for future research on, and evaluation of, city leadership and its practice around the world.

Leading Your Community: A Guide for Local Elected Leaders is a quick and easy-to-understand introduction to the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of local elected officials. This e-book provides a framework to help the newly elected official strengthen his/her effectiveness as an individual leader and as a member of the local leadership team. This e-book provides strategies to help local elected leaders broaden their leadership perspective to be able to anticipate new challenges while maintaining attention to day-to-day service needs.

This study explores the work life of mayors, city managers, and other top executives in city government. Based on a survey of 527 city executives and enlivened with numerous anecdotes, the book documents time allocation patterns and work routines. City Executives makes comparisons with previous studies to show how city executives compare with managers in other types of organizations. The authors also note how city managers' role has changed over a 20-year period. City executives are shown to be like their private-sector counterparts. For example, they function at a relentless pace, are frequently interrupted in their work, and are generally overburdened. However, because city workers operate in an environment open to public scrutiny, they are left with only a minority of their professional time to attend to matters that they describe as priorities. Instead, they must constantly respond to intergovernmental demands, emergencies, and the needs of citizens and legislative officials.

How will increasingly diverse cities and counties strengthen their political leadership for the 1990s and beyond? How can mayors and other officials become effective leaders in government structures that deny them executive power and diffuse their political leadership? What kind of leadership will this be and what impact will it have? Facilitative Leadership in Local Government shows how officials can reach beyond the structural limitations of their position and work with the constraints of fragmented power to build strong and effective government. In this book, James H. Svara and expert contributors offer local government officials and those that work with them a guide to a successful new model of leadership--facilitative leadership. The facilitative leader accomplishes objectives by enhancing the efforts of others. Rather than seeking power for themselves, facilitative mayors or chairpersons seek to empower the city council and the city manager by stressing collaboration and collective leadership among all parties so that all can work effectively together.

This revised textbook for courses on urban politics challenges the notion that the field is dominated by political economy, showing that despite the undeniable importance of economic issues, citizens do play a significant part in urban politics.

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.

Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles. In The Heart of the City, distinguished urban planner Alexander Garvin shares lessons on how to plan for a mix of housing, businesses, and attractions; enhance the public realm; improve mobility; and successfully manage downtown services. Garvin opens the book with diagnoses of downtowns across the United States, including the people, businesses, institutions, and public agencies implementing changes. In a review of prescriptions and treatments for any downtown, Garvin shares brief accounts--of both successes and failures--of what individuals with very different objectives have done to change their downtowns. The final chapters look at what is possible for downtowns in the future, closing with suggested national, state, and local legislation to create standard downtown business improvement districts to better manage downtowns. This book will help public officials, civic organizations, downtown business property owners, and people who care about cities learn from successful recent actions in downtowns across the country, and expand opportunities facing their downtown. Garvin provides recommendations for continuing actions to help any downtown thrive, ensuring a prosperous and thrilling future for the 21st-century American city.