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RedditIF MAYORS RAN AMERICA: In today's presidential campaign, America seems all tractor pulls, county fairs, town halls and truck stops. Candidates scramble for photo ops in plaid, stump in wheat fields and scarf down corn dogs. Yet more than 80 percent of Americans live in cities. By stressing rural voters so strongly, presidential candidates risk ignoring the bread-and-butter issues that matter most to most Americans--housing, transportation, infrastructure and crime. The candidates should, of course, have an urban agenda. But what should it be?
A new collaborative video project between The Nation and the Drum Major Institute asks the people who know our cities best: America's mayors. In ten punchy interviews, the mayors of Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Rochester and Salt Lake City offer their prescriptions for a reinvigorated urban agenda.
The contrast between the mayors' priorities and the presidential candidates' rhetoric couldn't be more stark. "In presidential elections, the media and pollsters focus on issues like war, abortion, gay rights, things that, quite frankly, for those of us in the trenches, aren't the hot-button issues," says Miami Mayor Manny Diaz. "People want to know that their kids will get a good education, that their neighborhoods will be safe and clean.... It's difficult for me to understand how presidential candidates don't see that. Those are the issues that affect Americans each and every day. We [mayors] are dealing with them, and [candidates] should also be dealing with them."
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