Berlin: the gay left-winger whose city is cool, but broke

by Roger Boyes

Klaus Wowereit is famous for two phrases. The first - “and that's the way it should be” (und das ist auch gut so) - was his public admission of homosexuality.

The second was his description of Berlin as “poor but sexy”, as if sexiness were a compensation prize for an all but bankrupt city.

In the German capital, the 54-year-old Mayor leads a left-leaning Social Democrat-Left alliance positioning his city as open to the world and himself as someone to fight the corner of the urban poor. On this rather thin basis, he is also positioning himself to become the next-but-one Social Democrat candidate for the leadership of Germany.

But Wowereit's credibility as a future German leader - following in the footsteps of Willy Brandt, a West Berlin-Mayor-turned-Chancellor - hinges on his performance as a city administrator. And that is not good at all: under his leadership, Berlin is not so much “poor but sexy” as “poor and impotent”.

The reason why Berlin is so cool for the young of Europe is its cheapness. It is a depopulated metropolis, with cheap rents and disused factories making for ample gallery space and throbbing, packed-to-the-gills clubs.

But art needs patrons and the Mayor has done his level best to scare away serious investors with serious money.

The city has two huge problems. The first is a debt of more than €60 billion (£48 billion). Wowereit's solution for this is to give the only truly competent member of his Senate, Thilo Sarrazin, the finance minister, a free hand to make cutbacks and reduce new borrowing. The result is that Wowereit has developed an entirely random policy on what should be financially encouraged and what should not.

Secondly, Berlin is the least successful state in Germany, the least capable of benefiting from the economic recovery. Its unemployment rate of 15.9 per cent is worse than almost every other state.

The answer is to develop an industrial policy. But the factories have disappeared, driven out by the Cold War. Berlin, the classic proletarian city, no longer has a proletariat.

Why should that be? Because Wowereit is the most business-hostile politician in Germany. The way that US businessman Ronald S. Lauder was shooed out of town was typical. He lodged a bid to buy the Hitler-era Tempelhof airport and convert it into a medical clinic. Wowereit had no better concept, but wanted to close it down anyway. So he dismissed Lauder as a “rich uncle from America”.

Lauder did not like that; he was after all offering to create jobs. “Perhaps he is crazy enough to think that the bigger unemployment is in Berlin, the more powerful he becomes.” A more likely explanation is that Wowereit believes that re-industrialisation is somehow alien to Social Democracy.

Wowereit does not have the intellectual breadth of Willy Brandt, nor is he a visionary. Until recently he was at least hailed as Germany's top partygoer, drinking champagne at one ball or another. Now, anxious to convince voters of his working-class credentials he prefers to stay home watching television with his partner.

New York: the multibillionaire art collector who keeps changing parties

by James Bone

There are some things even billionaires can't buy. Even billionaires with “can-do” reputations. And thus New York's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has failed to attain two goals achieved by London: the congestion charge and the 2012 Olympics.

The founder of the Bloomberg financial news empire, who is worth over $11 billion, (£5.5 billion) narrowly won the election in 2001 in the chaotic aftermath of the World Trade Centre terror attacks when his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, endorsed him.

Though a lifelong Democrat, Bloomberg ran as a Republican to circumvent the Democratic Party machinery. After winning a second four-year term by a landslide, he recently switched sides again and left the Republican Party to become an independent. Barred from seeking a third term, Bloomberg is now tipped as a possible New York Governor or even a vice-presidential running mate for Barack Obama.

Obama recently asked Bloomberg to vet a major economic speech and to introduce him at the event. It was the second time the two had met during the campaign. The presidential hopeful bought “Mr Mayor” an eggs-and-potatoes breakfast at a Manhattan diner back in December. “The reason that I bought breakfast is because I expect payback of something more expensive,” Obama quipped. “I'm no dummy.”

Bloomberg was not always so popular. When he was first elected, many wondered whether a billionaire with a second home in Bermuda could really understand the concerns of working folk. When subway workers threatened to strike, Bloomberg bought himself a $540 mountain bike and declared that he would cycle from his Upper East Side mansion to City Hall.

But the former Wall Streeter has won plaudits for turning a $6 billion deficit in the city budget into a $3 billion surplus and slashing crime to historic lows. Unlike in London, the New York Mayor controls the police department. Bloomberg brought back former police commissioner Ray Kelly, who cut the murder rate to 494 as of last year, the lowest since record-keeping began in 1963.

Bloomberg also battled New York State to gain control over the city's failing schools. New York now issues a report card for each school, and those with a failing grade risk being shut down. An avid art collector, Bloomberg added his own flair to the city by approving installation of Christo's saffron fabric Gates over Central Park in 2005 - a project that had been blocked since 1979.

But Bloomberg was defeated on two initiatives that topped his wish list. Opposition from the powerful Democratic leader of the state legislature killed the Mayor's ambitious plan to build a stadium on the west side of Manhattan to attract the 2012 Olympics. The same politician blocked his proposal to impose a congestion charge on all motorists entering Manhattan south of 60th Street.

Paris: the gay socialist who built a beach along the Seine

by Charles Bremner

Bertrand Delanoe must be the world's most flattered mayor judging by the way that other cities are imitating the winning schemes that he has brought to Paris since 2001.

From Manila to Mexico City, capital cities have rushed to copy the ideas that the austere 57-year-old leftist has adopted to give Paris a dose of fun. Top among them are: the summertime plage along the Seine; the winter Nuit Blanche arts happening and the vélibs, the 20,000 “free” bicycles that have transformed the streets since last July.

These are the most eye-catching of the ways that France's first openly gay political leader has made Paris more pleasant for its 2.1 million residents. With his €9 billion (£7.2 billion) budget, Delanoe, a pragmatic, authoritarian manager, has also multiplied pedestrian space, built public housing and day-care centres and tried to prevent Paris turning into what he calls an elegant museum.

The first Socialist Mayor has done so well livening up the city - and taming its traffic - that its traditionally conservative voters re-elected him easily last month. He is now governing free of the alliance with the turbulent Green party that hobbled his first term.

The Mayor, who was born in Tunis and had an Engish grandmother, denies that he wants the Socialist leadership, which is to be decided in October. “My devotion is to Paris, the city I love,” he says. But it is assumed that he will attempt to follow the model of Chirac, the city's first executive mayor, who used his 18 years in the job as a launchpad for the presidency in 1995.

All this is a turnaround for the man who back in 2001 was written off as a hot-tempered apparatchik. He won then largely because Paris was tired of the sleaze-soaked years of Chirac and Jean Tiberi, his successor. But Delanoe's rigorous methods and sense of imagination clicked with a mood, especially among “les bobos”. These bourgeois-bohemians are the left-thinking professionals who are setting the tone of a city that has been deserted by its working class.

The Mayor won sympathy soon after the election, when he was stabbed in a homophobic knife attack as he celebrated the first Nuit Blanche party. A private man who lives in his own flat on the Left Bank, he plays down his homosexuality but he has attacked what he calls continuing hypocrisy.

Among his bêtes noires is Sarkozy, who he deems to be unfavourable towards gay rights. Sarkozy, however, is said to favour Delanoe taking over the Socialists and becoming his opponent - because he believes that France is not ready for a gay president.

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