Transcript
Narrator 0:00
Music. While referring to leadership, Nelson Mandela once remarked, if you want the cooperation of human beings around, you make them feel that they are important, and you do that by being humble. Although Mandela was not speaking of any particular leader when he made this statement, leaders in the nation’s Heartland have taken his words to heart at a public discussion called Building Heartland Cities, hosted by the University of Indianapolis on April 2, 2013, mayors Carl Dean of Nashville, Tennessee; and Michael Coleman of Columbus, Ohio; and former Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut joined moderator Carolyn Coleman from the National League of Cities to discuss metropolitan leadership. As a modern urban leader, Mayor Coleman noted the importance of innovation and collaboration.
Michael Coleman 0:53
The real key to a successful city is collaboration. Collaboration between your business community, your civic environment, your neighborhoods. Everybody understanding that in Columbus, we’ve all come over to on different boats, but we’re all in the same boat now. That’s the City of Columbus. We all got to work together. We got to figure this out. We have our debates, our disagreements, but the bottom line is we ultimately, we got to work together, and we got to stay fresh, new ideas, always promoting the city in every way we can. And I always say a city that stays the same will fall behind. And I believe a city that’s constantly moving, constantly changing, and if it doesn’t adjust and become competitive, it will be a city of the 20th century. I think there’s two kinds of cities in America. There’s those cities whose Renaissance was in the 20th century. They’ve done well, but there’s going down and they’re beginning to fail. And then there’s those cities whose best days are still ahead of them, the 21st century cities. One of them is in Nashville. One of them is Columbus, one of them is Indianapolis.
Narrator 2:08
Along with advocating collaboration and innovation, Mayor Hudnut believes that leaders in the heartland must be conscious of their city’s economic development and make the right decisions, especially when it comes to tax increases in order to promote continued economic growth and the well being of citizens.
Bill Hudnut 2:25
It’s a difference between wise spending and wild spending. The tax with a purpose that people can see is wise spending, and they’ll vote for it. They won’t just vote for an amorphous tax that increases everything you know.
Narrator 2:40
Mayor Dean, on the other hand, believes a leader’s ability to embrace diverse communities sets good leaders apart from others in this post industrial modern age.
Carl Dean 2:49
I said that Nashville has benefited from the increased diversity in the number of people who’ve moved to the city, and some of the recognition we’ve gotten recently was New York Times saying we’re the “It City”, or Conde Nast having us on list. Almost every one of those recognitions we get for entrepreneurial spirit or that, or what’s going on in Nashville, they say Nashville is really interesting, because a lot of different people live there. You never know who’s in Nashville, that it’s a much more diverse city than you expect. You got to embrace diversity, and you got to and what it brings to the city is all positive energy, entrepreneurs, people who want to work hard, people who just make your city a richer place. So we’ve done things like create a New Americans Council to help people get integrated into the city. We’ve created another program where people learn about the Civic the responsibilities of citizenship and how the city actually operates. It’s something that I think is is worth doing, and it makes the city better.
Ted Frantz 3:48
This podcast was produced by the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and the Department of Communication at the University of Indianapolis. It is made possible by the support of the Richard M Fairbanks Foundation, Indiana Humanities, and the Lily Endowment. For more information, please see our website, uindy.edu/mayoral.