Why are international mayors meeting in London?
Leaders from more than 30 cities are in London for a three-day summit about urban innovation called City Lab. And even though they come from very different places, their problems are mostly the same.
The Mayor of Athens (population: 664,046) has to cope with thousands of refugees arriving in his city every week. The Mayor of San Jose (population: 1m) worries about providing affordable housing in Silicon Valley. The Mayor of Pristina (189,000) is probably the only one who has recently been the subject of an alleged assassination plot.
Around two-thirds of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2050, according to the United Nations. The mayors see this as a massive opportunity and pat themselves on the back for being more nimble than national governments.
"At the city level citizens expect things to actually happen. They expect their mayors to perform and out of that you see that a lot of the change that is happening in the world is happening at a municipal level," says Steve Adler, the Mayor of Austin, Texas.
"How do we avoid traffic jams? How do we ensure there's no pollution in the city? How do we provide services to our citizens and how do we engage them? And how do we get feedback from them about how well we are serving them?" asks Dr Evans Kidera, the governor of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
Most of the mayors here are in a similar mould: polished, male and American. Maybe that's because the event is sponsored by the Aspen Institute, the Atlantic and Bloomberg Philanthropies - an American think-tank, an American magazine and an American charity. Or perhaps it's because the US loves the mayoral model.
"I always say to people that outside of being the President of the United States, being a mayor of a major American city is the greatest job in politics. There is no greater feeling. It's challenging, it's diverse and it's global in nature," according to the Mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock.
As the mayors tucked in to a gourmet buffet and listened to presentations about policing, big data and city branding, I was given a packed lunch and ushered to a minibus. CityLab features a series of field-trips to see urban innovation in the real world.
With an author, some management consultants, an academic and others, I toured the new Crossrail Station at Canary Wharf. It is as long as Canary Wharf's main tower is tall and up to 3,000 passengers will get off here every 12 minutes when it opens in 2018.
But the event's biggest draw was the double-act of the Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg.
Boris unveiled a new map of London's thriving tech scene, while Mike accused him of failing to fully embrace the taxi-app Uber. They talked about wealth, languages and fizzy drinks.
And even though this was billed as a celebration of leadership in cities, everyone left asking: Will Boris be Prime Minister and will Bloomberg run for the White House?
