Three Mayors Make the Case for More Funds

There’s a question hanging over the Habitat III conference, the big UN conference on housing and sustainable urbanism: where are the mayors? City representatives may be participating in large numbers at the confab, now being held in Quito, Ecuador. But they don’t have enough of a role in creating and shaping the New Urban Agenda that the summit will ratify.

At least, that’s the contention of an open letter published Friday by the mayors of Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris. Signed by Manuela Carmena (Madrid), Ada Colau (Barcelona), and Anne Hidalgo (Paris), the letter states that under-representing city leaders at the conference table is a major misstep, and arguably as much a symptom as cause of the problem. There is an increasing mismatch, they say, between the burdens cities carry and the funds they have to deal with them. Their solution: Spend 25 percent of state taxes at the municipal, not the national level.