Running a city: quotes from the London Mayor's race

LONDON London Eye
Originally uploaded by photoidias

(London from the London Eye, Flickr photo by Photoidias.)

New Yorker has a nice piece, "Capital Fellows" on the mayoral race and its entertainment value. There are a couple of great points on the last page of the piece.

1. "The strategy of the Livingstone campaign is to frame the contest as being between a man who has cared deeply about London all his life and has demonstrated an ability to deliver city services... Livingstone says that the mayor of a city the size of London has to be right on 90% of all decisions and 100% of the big decisions..."

2. And why Boris Johnson, known to be not too serious and a kidder, wants to be mayor -- "when I asked him why he was interested in a job that involved a lot of niggling details even though he didn't seem to be a niggling-detail sort of person, he said, 'The attraction of the job is that it's so deeply intricate. Every decision you make involves some sort of political theory. And all of them involve some sort of deep reflection on where the city's going to be in 20 years.'"

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This encompasses my view and approach to things, applying theory to practice, with a great deal of focus on the practical, the real, and transformation, rather than just mailing it in, and pontificating.

(Had some interesting conversations with vendors at the Florida Market yesterday. You can imagine that they are quite disappointed in how they are learning about inside deals and the gaming of the political process to benefit some people at the expense of others.)