Former Seattle Mayor Royer Speaks at IOP

To solve the problems in today's cities, politicians need to have a Institute of Politics (IOP) Director Charles Royer said yesterday to an audience of 50 at the Kennedy School.

Royer, who served a mayor of Seattle for 12 years, listed several major forces driving change in cities.

First, the globalization of the economy has changed the concept of regional firms, said Royer, who also served as president of the National League of Cities.

"Today, you can hardly tell who the economic players are by nationality," Royer said, noting that a Swedish-owned firm that built the tunnel under the English Channel is based in Seattle. "This is a big change to the concept of the nation-state."

Especially as national trade barriers are lowered, Royer said, cities and their suburbs become regional economies that compete globally.

Second, Royer said the decline of the Communist ideology and the end of the cold war has changed the scope of the global economy.

Royer compared the end of the cold war to the discovery that the world was round.

In previous decades, he said, "the world as we knew it in economic term ended at the Iron Curtain. Now, the world is round again."

A third trend that relates only to the United States is a "dramatic change in the allocation of the responsibilities of government," Royer said.

He said that the decline of the federal government's role in domestic policy has made cities more independent.

Royer said that one of the implications of the change is a great flow of people from the south to the north, both in Europe and in America.

And the result of this flow, he said, has been a "disproportionate loading in big urban centers from people of other cultures,"

There has been so much migration, Royer said,that jobs and quality of life become much poorerin the inner cities. And the middle class has fledto the suburbs, he said.

The cities have deteriorated rapidly, Royersaid, pointing to the fact that the fraction ofjobs and citizens in the suburbs has grown fromone-half to two-thirds.

Another example he cited was the city ofAtlanta, which had a 50 percent increase in jobsbetween 1985 and 1990.

But according to study by Professor ofEducation and Social Policy Gary A. Orfield, lessthan one percent of those new jobs went to peoplein the middle of the city.

This division between the city and the suburbshas made itself felt in public policy, but theseattitudes must end, Royer said.

"What these places need to do is to getpoliticians to look beyond the borders in whichthey're elected," Royer said. "We need to getpeople cooperating on the problems of the region."

One of the keys to keeping people andattracting businesses is making the city a niceplace to live in.

Royer said the only reason Microsoft is inSeattle, as opposed to another city, is that theparents of chair Bill Gates "think it's a niceplace to live in. And so does Bill Gates."

Royer said the high quality of the city'slifestyle is also the main reason why the BoeingCo. is there.

After the speech, Royer answered audiencequestions for about an hour, speaking on foreigncities and government programs, among othertopics

There has been so much migration, Royer said,that jobs and quality of life become much poorerin the inner cities. And the middle class has fledto the suburbs, he said.

The cities have deteriorated rapidly, Royersaid, pointing to the fact that the fraction ofjobs and citizens in the suburbs has grown fromone-half to two-thirds.

Another example he cited was the city ofAtlanta, which had a 50 percent increase in jobsbetween 1985 and 1990.

But according to study by Professor ofEducation and Social Policy Gary A. Orfield, lessthan one percent of those new jobs went to peoplein the middle of the city.

This division between the city and the suburbshas made itself felt in public policy, but theseattitudes must end, Royer said.

"What these places need to do is to getpoliticians to look beyond the borders in whichthey're elected," Royer said. "We need to getpeople cooperating on the problems of the region."

One of the keys to keeping people andattracting businesses is making the city a niceplace to live in.

Royer said the only reason Microsoft is inSeattle, as opposed to another city, is that theparents of chair Bill Gates "think it's a niceplace to live in. And so does Bill Gates."

Royer said the high quality of the city'slifestyle is also the main reason why the BoeingCo. is there.

After the speech, Royer answered audiencequestions for about an hour, speaking on foreigncities and government programs, among othertopics