Best Practices in Mayoral Leadership

Purpose & Approach:

When Philadelphia Mayor-elect Michael Nutter takes office in early 2008, he will be faced with a collection of complex and deep-rooted problems. To gain early momentum and set the tone of his administration, Mayor-elect Nutter will need to implement some quick, inexpensive, and high-impact initiatives in his first 100 days. 

To identify such initiatives, two Fels students, managed by a Fels project manager, researched what programs successful mayors around the country implemented early in their administrations. The cities surveyed included New York, Baltimore, Atlanta and Denver. This research produced 44 initiatives, ideas, and schemes to help inform Philadelphia’s new mayoral administration, spark public dialogue, and promote effective action. After surveying the initiatives that American mayors undertook early in their administrations, the Fels team looked abroad at international mayors for inexpensive and high-impact ideas.

Results & Publications:

One of the results of this research was a list of ten ideas that Mayor-elect Nutter could implement in his first 100 days of office. These ideas were just too good to ignore.  They cover a range of priorities from financial management to educational support to environmental issues.

The top 10 list was published as an Op-Ed piece on November 12, 2007 in the Daily News: 10 Ideas Nutter Can Steal From Other Cities

The complete list of 44 ideas was highlighted on TheNextMayor.Com web blog:  http://www.thenextmayor.com/44_great_ideas.html

In addition, Fels Director of Projects Allison Brummel spoke about the research on WHYY’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane on November 19th, 2007. A podcast of that interview is found here: http://www.whyy.org/podcast/111907_110630.mp3

For more information, contact Catherine Lamb, Project Manager, at catlamb@sas.upenn.edu.