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Mayors as Leaders: Navigating Challenges and Sources of Success in Canadian Cities

Explore the role of mayors in Canadian cities, including their leadership styles, sources of success, and challenges faced. From mobilizing council to influencing agendas, this article delves into the dynamics of mayoral leadership within weak mayor systems. Discover how developers, citizens, and diverse communities shape local governance.

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Mayors as Leaders: Navigating Challenges and Sources of Success in Canadian Cities

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Presentation Transcript

  1. Leaders, developers and citizens

  2. Mayors as Leaders • All Canadian cities have weak mayor systems • Most Canadian cities have a chief bureaucrat often called city manager • The nearest thing to an exception is Montreal where a quasi-cabinet system exists • Mayors as symbolic leaders

  3. Mobilizing Council • Stable coalitions? • Ad hoc alliances?

  4. Sources of Leadership Success • Shared ideals • Electoral collaboration • Moral force of at-large constituency • Popularity across municipality • Appeals to groups who can influence councilors • Support of social and economic elites • Control of committee chairmanships (Toronto)

  5. Sources of Leadership Success (continued) • Influence on Council agenda • Chairing Council (except in Toronto, Montreal or Winnipeg) • “favour for favour” • How important is socio-economic context (e.g. case of Mississauga)

  6. Challenges to effective leadership • Highly divided council with little will to compromise • Highly ideological mayor with little will to broker • Declining personal popularity • Perception that mayor’s support is narrow • Non-cooperative or unsupportive elites • Inability to retain support of committee chairs • Few favours to trade

  7. Developers • History • local improvement taxes • corporate city • Local governments and housing policy • Property development and architectural vision • Rent review and development • Non-housing property

  8. Citizen Diversity and Local Government • Ethnic diversity • Religious diversity • Class diversity • Other diversity

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