"Cities must be places where everyone's heart can sing."
-- Joe Riley, mayor of Charleston, S.C., from 1975-2016
Little Rock, which will soon elect its first new mayor in 12 years, could use a new song for its residents' hearts. Choosing the best mayoral candidate to help compose that song matters, because people still trust local government.
"Mayors are non-partisan," says Trinity Simons, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Mayors' Institute on City Design. "Most value compromise over confrontation. Leadership is happening at the local level."
Simons, a native of El Dorado, works with mayors from cities across the country on planning and design issues, as well as offering insights on the intersection of design and political activity.
During her recent address at the Architecture and Design Network June Freeman lecture series at the Arkansas Arts Center, she noted how technology growth and a rapidly changing economic landscape "require planning and design to be nimble and responsive; cities expect mayors and other elected officials to be at the forefront of responsible planning."
Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola attended the Mayor's Institute on City Design in 2017, Simons said, one of over 1,100 who have taken advantage of a program that educates mayors about design and the design community about the latest practical needs of cities.
Mayor Stodola, Simons said, "used recommended strategies centered on returning cultural institutions to Main Street to enhance the public realm, resulting in multiple benefits serving multiple constituencies."
During his tenure, a once droopy north-south corridor of empty storefronts is now energized with restaurants, loft apartments, an art gallery, Ballet Arkansas headquarters, bars, media companies, a technology park, and a church, with access aided by extensive street reconstruction of the 600 and 700 blocks. There's more work to do (especially on the southwest corner of Main and Capitol Avenue), but nobody can complain about a lack of progress.
Among 16 other Arkansas mayors to participate in the Institute since 1990 are Mike Dumas of El Dorado, Fred Hanna Jr., Dan Coody, and Lioneld Jordan of Fayetteville, Lottie Shackelford and Jim Dailey of Little Rock, Patrick Hays and Joe Smith of North Little Rock, Carl Redus Jr. of Pine Bluff, and Keith Ingram of West Memphis.
Simons, who has a bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Arkansas and a master of city planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had a lot to say about issues that should concern any new mayor--among them equity, mobility, public safety, and retail.
"Just after the recession of 2008, there was a halt in development," she said. "Now we are starting to see mayors who care about quality-of-life issues."
Among them are so-called Equity mayors, who started appearing in 2016--females, people of color, younger "baby" leaders, people who look more like their communities. Their concerns include affordable housing, workforce development, social issues, fixing crumbling infrastructure, and connecting poorer areas to richer areas. "All should contribute to the human spirit," Simons says.
"Building more roads to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to fight obesity," she said, attributing that quote to "a lot of people." Mobility means more than cars. When considering how to navigate cities quickly, think bicycles, scooters, autonomous vehicles, Uber, public transportation. Hey, mayors: How will these imprint and landscape over the next 20 years?
Simons didn't directly mention the divisive 30 Crossing project planned by the Arkansas Department of Transportation, although she did observe that around her shop it was common wisdom that, with the possible exception of state legislatures, DOTs are the mayors' worst enemies. The proposed project will widen the seven-mile Interstate 30 corridor through Little Rock and North Little Rock from three lanes to 10 (and more in places).
Going back to her comment about solving traffic woes with more roads, Simons remarked, "Little Rock still has scars from I-630, a gash of a freeway," referring to how the east-west interstate, completed in 1985, is blamed for significant social alterations in the city.
- Public safety isn't just about police. Design has a role. "Cities like Cleveland, Ohio, have dead zones in the center of downtown where people don't go," Simons said. We've had that in the past. We don't want it now.
Crime is one of Little Rock's top concerns, impending progress and opportunities to grow. What to do? According to Arkansas Money and Politics, mayoral candidate Warwick Sabin wants to reinstate community policing, with police officers assigned to neighborhoods. Fellow candidate Baker Kurrus advocates moving away from dealing with community issues at the end of the failure cycle and instead spending time and money reducing the causes of the problems. And contender Frank Scott Jr. wants to engage in community policing and community prosecution programs, strengthen the relationships between the mayor's office, LRPD and the U.S. Attorney's Office to get criminals off the streets, and that the city attend to complaints about police misconduct.
- Amazon, which is planning a distribution facility in North Little Rock, signals the changing nature of retail (and employment, by creating 60-100 new jobs). "Retail is sure to become more delivery based," Simons says. That means we'll be seeing more food delivery, grocery delivery. "Development here is strong but fragile," she notes. It won't get more muscular on its own.
The best mayors have vision, Simons says. They are "champions at bringing people to the table, champions at empathy--which is preferred over everything else--and holders of complex narratives in their heads."
That would include the lyrics to a song that everyone in the city can sing.
Karen Martin is senior editor of Perspective.
kmartin@arkansasonline.com
Editorial on 10/21/2018