Benjamin Barber asserts that mayors should rule the world

This is one of the speakers coming up at the Power of Place Summit, Providence, RI, May 23rd.  Tune in this week as we are running a great series of interviews with the members and key note speakers from Grow Smart RI.  Here's a link as well to the Summit.  

We will broadcast live from there.  We hope to see you there or tune in here for more updates and reports:  http://www.growsmartri.org/2014-summit/


In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time - climate change, terrorism,economic stagnation - the nations of the world seem paralyzed.  The problems seem too big, entrenched and divisive for the nation state.   Is the nation state, once democracy's best hope, today dysfunctional and obsolete?  The answer is "yes" according to Benjamin R. Barber in his latest book If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities.

Barber, a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, will deliver the keynote speech at Grow Smart Rhode Island's Power of Place Summit on Friday, May 23rd at the Rhode Island Convention Center.  The keynote presentation is in partnership with the Providence Preservation Society as part of their yearlong speaker series entitled Not Always Easy: Building the New Urban Experience, featuring dynamic urban leaders and experts on topics including government and development, open space and public land, and transportation. Barber's talk is the third installment of PPS' 2013-2014 series. 

In his book, Barber asserts that cities, and the mayors that run them, offer the best new forces of good and effective governance.  Why cities?  Because they're the most networked and interconnected of our political associations, he says, and because they're defined by collaboration and pragmatism, by creativity and multiculturalism.  Through rigorous research and extensive surveys, Barber demonstrates that regardless of city size or political affiliation, local executives exhibit a non-partisan and pragmatic style of governance that is often lacking in state, national and international halls of power.  Quoting former New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, "There is no Democratic or Republican way of fixing a sewer", he says.  

So what about Rhode Island?  How can a "city-state", as we're often referred to, compete and govern most effectively in this new world order that Barber talks about?   Could Rhode Island, the 2nd most urbanized state in the nation, capitalize more fully on its urban character and better empower its 39 cities and towns to shape a more prosperous and resilient region?  Grow Smart's executive director Scott Wolf says "Come hear what Benjamin Barber has to say about playing more effectively to our strengths".

 Among his audience will be the major candidates seeking to become Rhode Island's next Governor, including two who are sitting mayors.   Following the keynote, Governor Lincoln D. Chafee will offer remarks and then the candidates will participate in a panel discussion to share their visions and perspectives for how Rhode Island can better tap its economic potential.