For women who are either active or have a strong interest in politics, being able to see women in leadership is reassuring. Now, not all women have policies I agree with or advocate. Yet, it’s great to know that it’s possible for women to be in politics and still be people. And today’s inspiring person happens to be one of them.

This is Inspiring People and it’s what I do on Sundays here on The Black Urbanist to highlight people in the urbanism/local government/planning/placemaking/add your adjective here space to highlight how they inspire me as a person also in this space. I’m also dropping a book in a couple of weeks. A Black Urbanist-Essays Vol. 1 is my first stab at putting these thoughts on literal paper. I’ll be launching an e-edition via a site called Gumroad on December 1, which will present it as a PDF. Look for a print and mainstream e-book edition in the future. Either way, it’s a great way to support what I’m doing here at The Black Urbanist. Check it out here.

I have the good fortune of having had three women be mayor during my lifetime in my hometown. Raleigh, my college hometown, has elected a woman to her second term. And DC, my current favorite city, outside of the former two, just elected its next one. As of January of this year, there were 269 mayors of U.S. cities over 30,000 people. My mayor, Nancy Vaughan, is one. Both her and Nancy McFarlane are two of fourteen women mayors of cities over 200,000 people in population. I’ll be interested to see what this years numbers look like (please, someone tweet, Facebook or put a link to those numbers in the comments). Hence why I’ve decided to focus on Mayor Vaughan as my inspiring person this week.

When I was in Nashville two weeks ago, I was there for the CEOs for Cities National Meeting. I was in a delegation with several Greensboro leaders, including Mayor Vaughan. She was on the program and this picture captures a bit of her brief speech:

She’s done a lot of awesome things outside of just being mayor. She’s shown her love of hockey. She’s approachable on social media. She’s a good hostess (and I say this in the spirit of her just being a good hostess, not that she should be one, even though she’s also married to a former state senator and fellow city council member). Same spirit goes to her being an awesome mom and daughter. Oh, and speaking of social media, as of this writing, I just saw where she’d volunteered to help build some tiny houses here in Greensboro.

I was most proud of her in this moment shown above, when she presented about her efforts to end poverty in Greensboro and to develop regional collaboration, having worked on a portion of this initiative with Winston-Salem mayor Allen Joines.

I’ve gone to plenty urbanism/good governance conferences and poverty’s still, if not a taboo subject, one that is controversial and one that doesn’t bring out the happy feelings. Trust me, I gave a poverty-focused speech to a group of local government leaders in Fort Lauderdale when I was there recently. People there spoke of my convictions and of it being a provocative speech. Other conferences I’ve attended discuss the subject, but often nothing is done outside of discussion.

Yet, here was my mayor discussing it, in the midst of other mayors presenting more happy-go-lucky “we saved our city” topics.

We have a ways to go in Greensboro with fixing our issues, but so do even some of those “happy-go-lucky” cities. And I’m proud to know and admire my mayor, who is doing a great job of moving us forward.

You know how you admire someone’s work from afar for years, hear all kinds of wonderful things about them, meet them once, and twice and over and over, and continue to learn more? That’s how I feel about the inspiring person I’ve chosen for this week, Mitchell Sliver, FAICP, Commissioner of the New York Parks Department (and a litany of other things).

This is Inspiring People, the Sunday feature of the The Black Urbanist where I highlight people in the placemaking space who are inspiring and why they are. Before we get back into the meat of the post, just a reminder that The Black Urbanist is powered by Bluehost.  Check them out and they’ll get you started with everything you need about web hosting and blog making. They’ve kept me going right here for the past 4 years and counting.

I first met Mr. Sliver at N.C. State’s wonderful Urban Design conference back in 2011. I’d published the Grist article, been invited to CNU 19 and I was still reaching folks here and there on Twitter and Facebook. One of those people I’d reached was Mary Newsom, who at the time was still writing for the Charlotte Observer on placemaking and is now at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute (and inspiring on her own). She brought me over to meet him and that’s when I found out he was also a black urbanist.

Fast forward to CNU 20 in West Palm Beach. I attended conference sessions and shared meals with Mitch, at his first CNU. After that time, I felt like I’d gained an uncle in the planning space. I cheered him on as he handled the reigns of the American Planning Association. I looked on from afar as he continued to make Raleigh a better place. I heard him give one of his famous speeches at the 2013 NCSU Urban Design Conference. I was sad, but happy, like everyone else as he became parks commissioner of his hometown, New York City, earlier this year. In his official bio, his new mayor has this to say about him:

“He has a passion for fairness and equality, and he brings it to the work of government, and understands that we have to ensure that parks and open spaces are available in every community, and are well-maintained in every community in this city.”

Oh and Mayor DeBlasio called him a visionary.

It is that vision that inspires me and countless other planners, placemakers, park people and others in the space of making place to value his knowledge and his intellect not just for New York City parks and Raleigh but anywhere else he’s worked and taught and spoken.  In addition, he is a shining example of black achievement and proof that despite our small numbers in the field, we still know how to make an impact.

Read his official bio here.

And this nice profile of the work he’s been doing in New York as parks commissioner.

This post is part of my participation in #NaBloPoMo, the time of the year when bloggers come together to pump out daily content and connect. Find out more about that project and how I’m participating, here and here.