Joseph P. Riley Jr.

Riley was mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, for forty years from 1975 and became a national authority on urban design, founding the Mayors' Institute on City Design to teach other mayors. He insisted on high-quality public spaces, building Waterfront Park instead of allowing private development, and scattered affordable housing in historic styles across the city. He appointed Charleston's first Black police chief. Gentrification of the historic peninsula is the criticism most often made of his success.