At a plenary session in New York City October 6 before an audience of infrastructure experts, Conference President and Denver Mayor Wellington E. Webb, joined by other Conference leaders, explained his 'New Agenda for America,' underscoring that his belief that "The 21st Century is the century for cities and that the emphasis is going to be on the cities."

He used the opportunity to outline the basic elements of his agenda, the subject of extensive discussions last month at the Conference's Leadership Meeting in Denver, stressing that the mayors and others will be pressing to make dialogue on these issues part of the next year's Congressional and Presidential election.

Joining with Webb for a plenary session before the Forbes Magazine Conference on "Revitalizing America's Infrastructure" were Forth Worth Mayor Kenneth Barr, Lynn Mayor Patrick McManus and Newark Mayor Sharpe James.

"I think we have a historic opportunity with the Presidential race coming up, which is only the second campaign in the past 30 years where no incumbent is running, to create a fundamentally different partnership between our cities and federal and state governments," Webb said.

"It is an agenda that serves the interests of America as well as the interests of cities," Webb said. "Our agenda isn't about spending more money, it's about spending what we have differently," Webb said before outlining the major elements of his vision.

Public Safety and Public Education

His remarks underscored the importance of public safety and public education in crafting a new partnership with cities. "It's my belief that for cities to prosper, there has to be certain elements that take place in the cities before you can do major development, because if you don't address these issues, people leave cities- And so for any mayor not to address the issue of public safety first, as part of their infrastructure building program, they are not going to have the population base to sustain it. I also believe very strongly that the second core value or cornerstone has to be quality education within that city. In most municipalities, whether the mayor runs the schools or not, the mayors are held responsible for what happens in the schools," he said.

Competitive Assets

Explaining the need for cities to build upon their competitive assets, the third element of the agenda, Webb said, "If you as a city and a municipality handle those two issues, public safety and education, it allows you deal with the third issue, which is how you make your city more competitive with other cities across this nation. Now for us, we put it into parks, open space, building cultural and sporting amenities."

Finally, he noted the importance of building new partnerships in promoting economic development and infrastructure investment, which serve to underpin this new agenda. "To me, in today's society when we look at the federal government and its relationship to local government, the federal government to me is like the Air Force. They fly very high, they pass a lot of laws and the laws drop down upon us at the local level, not always knowing what collateral damage they're causing on the ground, whether it is unfunded mandates or whether it is putting in or requiring structures to be built, whatever it may be. State government tends to be more territorial. The third level is local government, which are the foot soldiers. It's left up to us to hold, build, provide and maintain the infrastructure within our communities and within our regional economies."

He called upon the financial community and others to support the mayors and other local efforts. "We have to make sure that the nation does not walk away from the investment in cities. You have a substantial interest in opposing federal and state policies that promote sprawl and that diminish the equity interest in our public interest, in our center cities and in our core assets."

Untapped Markets

Among the key themes of this agenda is a renewed attention to invested in untapped markets. Webb said, "Every city in this country also has underserved neighborhoods, with surplus labor, with brownfields served with existing infrastructure and a lot of density. Around the corner from this hotel, we have some of the best retail space in the world. I think it doesn't happen by accident. Most of the people in this city, Manhattan, come by public transportation and once they are on foot, they buy things. We know that we need transit. We need the ability to move people from one place to another. Cars don't shop, people do."

Citing one of many successful stories of business success in these markets, Webb pointed out that "We know that in Harlem very recently Blockbuster opened in an underserved neighborhood and it's the highest grossing Blockbuster in the state of New York, an underserved neighborhood where they didn't provide for existing services."

He described the many efforts in Denver to jump-start the regional economy after the downturn of the 1980s, explaining how investment in the new Denver Airport and other initiatives had poured billions of dollars into the local economy. In discussing the benefits of this renewed focus on cities, Webb said, "So I think it's about an American agenda that's about doing good business, that requires us to do some things differently. It requires us to look at cities differently."

Webb also placed the various elements of the mayors' agenda in a broader context. "We have to move towards providing more flexibility for local government. It's not just about new programs and fully funding existing programs. New markets are not created by a handful of highly targeted tax incentives. They're not created by government subsidies. The real leverage for change in some of these particular programs is what we need is a larger agenda, that provides for direct ways of doing business with cities. That builds upon how we can make an urban market strategy as good public policy, and that it can't be micro-managed with thinking that one fabric fits all. It needs to be differentiation between many of the programs, between what works in Tulsa and may not work in Ft. Worth, and what works in Ft. Worth and may not be what works in Lynn Massachusetts," Webb said.

In concluding his remarks, Webb said, "We think there is a bright opportunity for the future of cities. We want to look for ways to create a partnership to work with you, the private sector, in a meaningful way and work with you in a long term way to make cities a priority more than they have been in the past in this nation."

Smart Growth and Regional Cooperation

Joining with Webb for the discussion of the new agenda, Mayor Barr delivered remarks on the need for more attention to smart growth and regional cooperation. "We know that we can make better decisions. We know that there is much potential in doing our work more cooperatively in our regions- And, there is the potential to grow more efficiently, and increase our regional economic output," Barr said.

Barr explained the work of the Conference on regional economic output and what this data suggests about how the nation grows and organizes. "Smarter growth is not about values, it is about economic value for our citizens."

Infrastructure Investment

Mayor McManus explained the importance of federal partnership to help communities maintain and expand their infrastructure, noting how public/private partnerships in water and wastewater treatment services were helping close the financial gap for cities. McManus praised House Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (PA) and Ranking Minority Member Jim Oberstar (MN) for their leadership to strengthen the partnership with cities and counties on surface transportation and aviation infrastructure investment.

McManus praised the private sector for their efforts in working with cities on these issues, urging them to "engage more fully and directly with mayors" to help cities meet increasing infrastructure needs.

Touting his city's success in using its infrastructure to promote economic development, Mayor James explained how the City of Newark attracted the New Jersey Performing Art Center because of local infrastructure investment. He emphasized how "infrastructure underpins everything we do" and that cities have much to offer investors because of their infrastructure.