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Tom L. Johnson
Born
A former streetcar magnate, Johnson was Cleveland's mayor from 1901 to 1909 and fought for three-cent fares and municipal ownership of utilities against the private franchises he had once profited from. He built public bath houses, parks and a municipal electric plant, and recruited talented reformers such as Newton Baker. The muckraker Lincoln Steffens called Cleveland the best-governed city in America. The Ohio legislature and courts curtailed many of his plans, a reminder of how much depends on state power.
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Daniel Hoan
Milwaukee's Socialist mayor from 1916 to 1940, Hoan led what critics called 'sewer socialism': clean water, public sewerage, municipal markets, public housing cooperatives and an honest, efficient administration that kept the city's debt low. Milwaukee was repeatedly ranked among the best-run cities in the country, and he paid down debt during the Depression. The practical, unglamorous socialism contrasts with the ideological fights of his party nationally.
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Fiorello La Guardia
Born
La Guardia broke Tammany Hall's control of New York in 1934 and used New Deal money, through his close relationship with Roosevelt, to build on a scale no city had seen: public housing, parks, bridges, the airport that bears his name. He backed the 1936 city charter that created a stronger mayor, a planning commission and a proportionally elected council, unified the subway system under city ownership in 1940 and expanded merit-based civil service. Much of his building was delivered by Robert Moses.
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Richard J. Daley
Born
Daley ran Chicago from 1955 until his death in 1976 as both mayor and boss of the Cook County Democratic machine. 'The city that works' built O'Hare into the world's busiest airport, the expressway network and downtown towers, with reliable services delivered through patronage. The same system concentrated public housing in segregated high-rises, and the police violence at the 1968 Democratic convention, with his 'shoot to kill' order during riots that year, defined his national image.
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Maynard Jackson
Born
Atlanta's first Black mayor, elected in 1973, Jackson insisted that minority-owned firms receive a share of contracts for the new Hartsfield airport terminal, delaying the project until the business establishment agreed; minority participation in city contracts rose from under 1 per cent to over a third. The model was copied by cities across the country. He also created neighbourhood planning units giving residents a formal role in zoning. Later court rulings narrowed race-conscious contracting programmes nationwide.
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Tom Bradley (mayor)
Born
A former police officer, Bradley was Los Angeles mayor for twenty years from 1973, built a multiracial coalition and transformed downtown into a financial centre. He secured the 1984 Olympics, run privately and at a profit, and started the Metro Rail system against long odds in a car city. His relationship with the semi-independent police chief Daryl Gates was tense, and the 1992 unrest after the Rodney King verdict led to the Christopher Commission and charter reforms limiting the chief's tenure.
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Harold Washington
Born
Chicago's first Black mayor, elected in 1983, Washington spent his first term blocked by a white machine majority on the council, the 'Council Wars'. Court-ordered redistricting gave him a majority in 1986. He signed an executive order ending most patronage hiring, issued a freedom of information order opening city records, and spread spending to neglected neighbourhoods. He died in office in 1987, and the machine quickly reasserted itself, which is why his reforms are judged as much by their difficulty as their durability.
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Henry Cisneros
Born
San Antonio's first Mexican American mayor since the 1840s, elected in 1981 after the city moved to district council elections, Cisneros shifted infrastructure spending to the long-neglected West Side and courted technology and tourism investment, including the Alamodome. He worked closely with the community organisation COPS, whose pressure on drainage and streets in Mexican American neighbourhoods shaped his agenda. He later became Clinton's Housing Secretary, where he began the HOPE VI rebuild of public housing.
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Ed Koch
Born
Koch took over a New York that had nearly gone bankrupt in 1975 and restored the city's credit by the early 1980s, then launched a ten-year housing plan in 1986 that rebuilt or created over 150,000 units, largely from abandoned city-owned buildings in the Bronx and Harlem. That housing programme is widely seen as his most lasting achievement. His third term was mired in corruption scandals among borough allies, and his handling of the AIDS crisis and race relations drew heavy criticism.
More about Ed Koch10
Joseph P. Riley Jr.
Born
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.
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Bernie Sanders
Born
Before the Senate, Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, from 1981 to 1989 and backed the creation of the Burlington Community Land Trust in 1984, which keeps homes permanently affordable by separating ownership of the land from the house. The model has since spread to hundreds of communities. His administration also redeveloped the Lake Champlain waterfront as public space instead of private condominiums. Its small scale is the obvious caveat: Burlington had fewer than 40,000 residents.
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Rudy Giuliani
Born
Giuliani's mayoralty from 1994 adopted CompStat, the NYPD's data-driven system of weekly crime statistics and accountable precinct commanders developed under Commissioner William Bratton, which police departments worldwide copied. Crime fell steeply, though it also fell in cities without his methods, and his aggressive 'quality of life' policing was followed by the police killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999 and complaints of racial targeting. His later legal and political career, including disbarment, has overshadowed the mayoral record.
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Thomas Menino
Born
Boston's longest-serving mayor, from 1993 to 2014, Menino was nicknamed the 'urban mechanic' for his focus on potholes, streetlights and schools rather than grand projects. He created the Mayor's Hotline and the Citizens Connect smartphone app for reporting problems, launched the Main Streets programme to revive neighbourhood high streets, and backed the Hubway bike share. His style was intensely personal, and critics said power was too concentrated in City Hall. A poll late in his tenure found about half of Bostonians said they had met him.
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Richard M. Daley
Born
The younger Daley, mayor from 1989 to 2011, persuaded the Illinois legislature to give him control of Chicago's schools in 1995, a model of mayoral control later copied in New York and elsewhere. He planted hundreds of thousands of trees, built Millennium Park and demolished the failing high-rise public housing projects under the Plan for Transformation. Critics point to the 75-year parking meter lease sold in 2008 at a price that cost the city billions, cost overruns at Millennium Park and police torture cases that surfaced from his time as state's attorney.
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Martin O'Malley
Born
As mayor of Baltimore from 1999, O'Malley adapted CompStat into CitiStat, a system of regular data-driven meetings in which every city department, from refuse collection to housing inspection, had to account for its performance numbers. It was credited with saving money and cutting response times, and governments from Atlanta to Washington State copied it as 'PerformanceStat'. His zero-tolerance policing in the same years produced mass arrests later criticised by civil rights groups and the city's own police reformers.
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Michael Bloomberg
Born
Bloomberg's three terms from 2002 changed New York's administration more than its skyline: the 311 non-emergency line, smoking bans in bars and restaurants, calorie labelling, PlaNYC sustainability targets, and bike lanes and pedestrian plazas such as Times Square under transport commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. He won mayoral control of schools from Albany in 2002. Critics point to the expansion of stop-and-frisk, ruled unconstitutional in its implementation in 2013, and to his changing the term limit law to run for a third term.
More about Michael Bloomberg17
Mitch Landrieu
Born
Landrieu became mayor of New Orleans in 2010, five years after Hurricane Katrina, and rebuilt the city's management: a consent decree to reform a notoriously corrupt police department, a new hospital and recovery projects using federal funds, and a balanced budget after years of deficits. In 2017 he removed four Confederate monuments, explaining why in a widely read speech. Critics noted persistent violent crime and that recovery was slower in poorer Black neighbourhoods.
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Pete Buttigieg
Born
In South Bend, Indiana, from 2012, Buttigieg set out to repair or demolish 1,000 vacant houses in 1,000 days, and met the target, and installed 'smart sewer' sensors to cut overflows into the river, saving the city hundreds of millions in required upgrades. He also ran a small-city version of data-driven management. The housing programme's demolitions fell disproportionately on poorer Black neighbourhoods, and his handling of a 2019 police shooting drew criticism. He later served as Transportation Secretary.
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Michelle Wu
Born
Boston's first woman and first Asian American mayor, elected in 2021, Wu extended fare-free bus routes using federal recovery funds, abolished the semi-independent Boston Planning and Development Agency to bring planning back under City Hall, and expanded universal pre-school. Her rent stabilisation proposal passed the city council but needed state approval that did not come. Business groups criticised her approach to development and property taxes. She was re-elected in 2025, so the longer-term effects are still being tested.
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