Tom Teodorczuk | Cities Today

The Beck Group’s Dallas Arboretum Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden is one of the projects competing for the Urban Land Institute award.America “is falling in love again with cities” according to a key White House aide of President Obama.

Julián Castro, Housing and Urban Development Secretary and former Mayor of San Antonio, Texas, said urban renewal was one of the present Democratic administration’s unheralded success stories. He was speaking recently at the winter meeting of the U.S Conference of Mayors in Washington DC at a panel discussion together with former Mayors Jerry Abramson, Anthony Foxx and Tom Vilsack who all hold prominent positions in the Obama administration.

“In many ways I think America is falling in love again with cities and folks are choosing cities again but that’s not always reflected in the priorities in State Legislatures and in Congress,” Castro said. “Mayors have a powerful voice to help make that happen for the benefit of the people they serve.”

Anthony Foxx, Transportation Secretary and former Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, said only Mayors and not government, can unite urban and rural America: “Mayors are uniquely positioned to do something that I think is almost impossible for Washington to do and that is to help bring down the walls between the urban and rural divide in this country. If there is more visioning done at a local level and policy at the federal level that supports those visions, there’s an enormous opportunity for us to solve problems instead of having them created by Washington.” Read more