Big City Bosses

Walter Veltroni really gets around. During a typical working day recently, the mayor of Rome started with a visit to a children's hospital in the morning, attended a groundbreaking ceremony at a center for the homeless in the afternoon, and then dropped in on an outpatient rehabilitation clinic on the other side of town before the day was through. The gangly, bespectacled Veltroni, 49, may look like an economics professor, but some Romans call him the Plumber because of his hands-on approach to governing the Italian capital. Like an actual plumber, though, Veltroni isn't always available when people need him, so he's set up a network of municipal employees and volunteers who make the house calls he's not able to make himself. As part of the Solidarity Pony Express, a new assistance program for senior citizens, some 500 young people hop onto their scooters every day to deliver food, medicine or company to the elderly. In another initiative, about 3,000 mostly retired people fan out across schools and parks to keep a watchful eye on children. "We want to show that in a huge metropolis, you can also be a community," says Veltroni, sitting in his frescoed office at the Palazzo Senatorio, overlooking the ruins of the Forum.

Across Europe, mayors like Veltroni are shaking up the way big cities are run — and as a result are enjoying views national politicians can only dream of. Veltroni's approval ratings, for example, bounce between 60% and 80%, while center-left leader Romano Prodi and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi struggle to reach 50%. Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë consistently tops polls of the French public's favorite elected officials. In Berlin, Klaus Wowereit remains the city's most popular politician, despite tackling a massive debt burden by making dramatic budget cuts. And in Stockholm, Annika Billström has many fans among minority and low-income groups notwithstanding her Social Democratic Party's poor showing. Even London's quarrelsome mayor Ken Livingstone, who's regularly embroiled in spats with the media and was once expelled from his own party, handily won re-election last year despite introducing a controversial $10 congestion charge for cars entering the city center.

The reason for this popularity is simple: mayors matter. Leave the grand visions to presidents and prime ministers; mayors are judged by their ability to pick up the trash, get traffic moving, deal with housing and commercial development, control crime, and convince their constituents — as well as tourists and investors — that their cities are best. Action, not image, is what counts with city dwellers, who now make up three out of every four Europeans. Fiorello LaGuardia, the legendary mayor of New York City from 1934-45, had a saying: There is no Republican, no Democratic, no Socialist way to clean a street or build a sewer, just a right way and a wrong way. These five remarkable mayors embrace a similar philosophy: innovation means more than ideology, pragmatism more than partisanship.

Veltroni, Billström, Livingstone, Wowereit and Delanoë face plenty of challenges in putting their practical innovations to work. They have to find creative ways to restore the sense of community that's often lost in the tangle of big-city life, to provide affordable housing for people on low or middle incomes, to ease road congestion and improve public transport, to manage tight municipal finances while enhancing quality of life. As more mayors across Europe are directly elected, the office is taking on increasing clout and visibility, and gaining powers that were previously the preserve of national governments. "To give vision and focus to a city, you need to invest in one person the authority to run the city," says Peter John, an expert on urban policy at the University of Manchester, England. "As cities become more competitive with each other, they need these figures to lead them." Meet the mayors who are providing Europe's most visionary leadership.

Walter Veltroni / Rome
The Action Man
For Veltroni, the best way to run a city is to be seen and heard — as often as possible. "He's always among the people," says Francesca Filippi, who's covered city hall for 15 years for the Rome daily Il Messaggero. "You don't meet anyone who hasn't met him somewhere, sometime. He's literally everywhere." Veltroni even makes a cameo appearance in Ian McEwan's new bestselling book, Saturday, when the protagonist flashes back to a fond memory of "a quiet, civilized man, with a passion for jazz" opening a medical conference in Rome.

Veltroni, a member of the Left Democratic Party, became Rome's second directly elected mayor in 2001. Before the introduction of direct elections in 1993, the city council chose the mayor, encouraging a culture in which ambitious politicians devoted more energy to backroom wheeling and dealing than to making their voices heard in the piazzas. That could never be said of Veltroni, whose childhood hero, Robert F. Kennedy, inspired his career in public service. On his watch, the city's cultural life is flourishing, public services are improving — and Romans are giving him credit for it. Holding free concerts at the Colosseum every year — featuring superstars like Paul McCartney and Simon and Garfunkel — has been a huge hit.

Veltroni has his opponents. Antonio Tajani of the Forza Italia party admits this kind of event is effective, but insists Veltroni is more show than substance. He's neglected more serious issues, Tajani argues, most notably the city's growing public debt, which has climbed from less than €6 billion to around €7 billion since Veltroni took office. "His popularity is ephemeral," says Tajani. "He is more concerned with promoting his public image than resolving the real problems of the city."

Veltroni defends his handling of city finances, noting the city maintains a top municipal credit rating. And he is convinced that his brand of up-close-and-personal politics is essential to restoring a sense of community and common purpose in big cities. "This is actually the way to govern," he says. "It's important that the people have actual physical contact with their mayor. This is a way for people to participate in the civic life of their community."

Ken Livingstone / London
The Traffic Cop
Sitting in his office in city hall, a postmodernist protuberance on the River Thames opposite the Tower of London, Ken Livingstone is entitled to a laugh at the expense of his many critics. He's at the peak of a political career that's spanned more than half of his 59 years. After a decade in local government, the Labour politician was elected head of the Greater London Council (glc), as the capital's governing body was then known, in 1981. Newspapers dubbed him Red Ken for sensationalist policies like declaring London a "nuclear-free zone." Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher disbanded the glc in 1986, but a year later Livingstone won a seat in Parliament, which he held for 14 years.