Wharton forum spoplights mayors

The ideal of the American city is being renewed. This was the theme of a Wharton School conference Saturday which featured seven mayors from cities across the country. Entitled "New Visions of the American City," the conference was highlighted by a panel discussion with the mayors, where each spoke about their respective roles in solving the problems of American cities. And the conference ended with an address by Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell. The conference was planned and organized entirely by graduate students from across the University. Approximately 250 students, faculty, community and industry members attended the conference which focused on addressing "key urban issues." The conference began with panel discussions featuring prominent representatives from local and regional businesses, schools, hospitals and government organizations. The speakers addressed a host of issues, ranging from small business development to urban health care to affordable city housing. The audience seemed "struck by the diversity of the speakers," said Wharton graduate student Robin Kim, conference spokesperson. The concluding mayoral panel addressed the more general issues of long-term city planning and integrated cooperation between city government and private organizations. "The problems of our cities? are multi-faceted and we have to work all fronts at once," said Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity, in his introduction of the mayoral panel. These problems, contended Atlantic City Mayor James Whelan, can not be dealt with by city government alone. "We need to recognize a reality in America? City government can not solve the problems of cities," he said. "Cities can not be the depository of other towns problems." Michael Peters, mayor of Hartford, Conn., said he feels American cities must foster a connection between private and public involvement. "Our greatest need is to change the mindset of how we deal with problems," argued Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. All panelists seemed to agree that in order to change this mindset, the city must first set a reasonable expectation level. "It is important that?we make it fairly clear what [the people] can reasonably expect the government to do and not to do," Rendell said. "The government can't do everything." Rendell added that one of government's central purposes is to give people the hope of making life better for themselves. "People want to work," he said. "It is our obligation in American society to give them that opportunity." That obligation, Rendell added, is "one of the biggest problems facing American cities today." This problem and others were the central focus of the two-hour mayoral panel. "I thought that there were some solutions presented that weren't debated before," Kim said. "There was a great diversity of issues, not just one topic in isolation." Conference organizers seemed generally pleased with the turnout and the panels. Yet the student organizers received little help from the administration, Kim said. "It was very difficult in terms of planning the conference to get support from the administration," she added. "It was only once they saw it would work that they started to support us." The student coordinators said they were able to organize the event with "no real problems." And according to Kim, their efforts resulted in a great degree of audience satisfaction and interaction. During the question and answer section of the panel discussion, several audience members angrily confronted the mayoral panel with questions about the future of American cities. The conference speakers responded to the audience with a great deal of optimism. "It's a wonderful challenge to bring the cities of America back to where they once were," said Carleton Finkbeiner, mayor of Toledo, Ohio. "I think we're gonna win it."