Metropolis: Like urban renewal, only backward

In Metropolis, Karrie Jacobs writes that whoever ends up in the White House could learn a lot about how to move this country forward by listening to our big-city mayors.

She says that while the federal government has been AWOL, mayors of large cities have been putting forth progressive, visionary agendas on the local and regional level for solutions that one would expect would come from Washington.

Cities and regions are increasingly girding themselves against the unthinkable, forming disaster support networks, antiterrorism agencies, and broad environmental programs - some on the scale that would seemingly require national action.

According to Jacobs, the Bush administration's myopic focus on war has made mayors such as Richard Daley and Michael Bloomberg "look exceptionally capable by comparison".

And she thinks that our big-city mayors should be considered a valuable political resource, full of forward-looking thoughts from which Washington should be drawing.