Mayors, Looking to Cities’ Future, Are Told It Must Be Colored Green

The mayor of Fayetteville, Ark., gushed through a slide show about how his city was in the midst of great change. Bleak roads and bland shopping strips were being redrawn to a more human scale. Downtown condominiums were going for a million dollars. Streets once silent at night now bustled.

Besides being great for the local economy, the mayor, Dan Coody, told his counterparts from other cities gathered here, the redevelopment is also helping Fayetteville go green.

“I’m so excited to be here and talk about this I can’t stand it,” Mr. Coody said at the end of his presentation on Thursday. “Let’s all go save the world!”

They settled for lunch, at least for the moment, but the 100 or so mayors who attended the two-day Climate Protection Summit, convened by the United States Conference of Mayors, heard a clear message: Cities that are “walkable,” workable and livable add up to the “s” word: sustainable. Cities that are centered on people and public transit, not cars, and built to higher standards of energy efficiency will save money, hum with new development and create jobs to suit a greener way of life.

Al Gore said as much in a speech he gave to the mayors via satellite. So did former President Bill Clinton, in an address here on Thursday, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who spoke Friday.

But many mayors spoke of the struggle of convincing voters that investing in green is good for them. John Robert Smith, the mayor of Meridian, Miss., said he had been criticized for supporting a plan to restore streetcar service in his city decades after autos made it seem obsolete.

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