WORLD MAYOR 2018
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WORLD MAYOR 2018
• Results 2018
• Project 2018
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• Longlist 2018
• Raison d'être
• World Mayor history
• World Mayor Prize
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INTERVIEWS WITH
• Mayor of Ancona
• Mayor of Doncaster
• Mayor of Rennes
• Mayor of Zamboanga


ESSAYS BY
• Mayor of Ancona
• Mayor of Cologne
• Mayor of Doncaster
• Mayor of Fort Worth
• Mayor of Lille
• Mayor of Paris
• Mayor of Rennes
• Mayor of Saarbrücken
• Mayor of Trbovlje
• Mayor of Tunis
• Mayor of Zamboanga

TESTIMONIALS
• Mayor of Alphen / Rijn
• Mayor of Ancona
• Mayor of Baden-Baden
• Mayor of Calais
• Mayor of Chemnitz
• Mayor of Cologne
• Mayor of Cozumel
• Mayor of Doncaster
• Mayor of Fort Worth
• Mayor of Grand Rapids
• Mayor of Lille
• Mayor of Lodz
• Mayor of Molenbeek
• Mayor of Narayanganj
• Mayor of Oakland
• Mayor of Omaha
• Mayor of Paris
• Mayor of Rennes
• Mayor of Reutlingen
• Mayor of Saarbrücken
• Mayor of San Juan
• Mayor of Trbovlje
• Mayor of Tunis
• Mayor of Zamboanga
• Mayor of Zurich

PROFILES OF
• Mayor of Ancona
• Mayor of Cologne
• Mayor of Doncaster
• Mayor of Fort Worth
• Mayor of Lille
• Mayor of Paris
• Mayor of Rennes
• Mayor of Saarbrücken
• Mayor of Trbovlje
• Mayor of Tunis
• Mayor of Zamboanga



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Nathalie Appéré
Mayor of Rennes, France

Awarded the 2018 World Mayor Commendation

12 February 2019: Nathalie Appéré has been the mayor of Rennes in Brittany, France, since April 2014. She has led the city through a period of growth and also one in which the population became more diverse. Migrants and refugees were welcomed.

The appeal and economic success of Rennes - the population of the urban area has increased by 12 per cent in the last decade - has made housing provision central to Mayor Appéré’s tasks. The Mayor she has strengthened the established ‘Rennes Housing Model’ and is now extending it. The Rennes Model stipulates that for every 100 homes built, 35 must be affordable, while another 25 must be social housing. The remaining 40 homes can be sold at market prices.

The Mayor is introducing a single rent structure for social housing to prevent the poorest households being pushed into low-rent districts. A new type of solidarity-based leasing will allow Rennes residents to become home owners without owning the land itself, thus making homes more affordable.

Nathalie Appéré became a member of the municipal council in 2002. In her first term as councillor, she had to liaise with local associations, which are significant in Rennes. In her second term she was in charge of solidarity and social cohesion. Nathalie Appéré was a member of the French National Assembly, representing Ille de Villaine from 2012 until 2017. In 2018 she claimed her administration had delivered on 76 per cent of the commitments made in 2014.

On climate change Nathalie Appéré writes in her World Mayor essay: “This struggle cannot be won unless people can be persuaded that the answer lies just as much in changing individual habits as in changing the rules governing how we live together. The art is to bring people along without berating them.”

A graduate of the Institut d’etudes Politiques de Rennes, she has worked as a researcher and in local development. She campaigned in the 2014 election as candidate of EELV/Parti de Gauche. She is a member of Socialist Party.

Although she has refused to confirm her candidature for the 2020 elections, she has said “l have driven a dynamic which makes Rennes spoken of amongst major French cities. Obviously that impulse is long-term and my horizon does not stop in 2020.” Her refusal to declare early is partly because of her stated wish to deliver and thus regain trust between politics and people.

Population growth has been stimulated by the quality of neighbourhoods, enhanced connectivity and expanding businesses and higher education sectors. Since 2016 the journey time to/from Paris by rail has been an hour and a half. A new conference centre and a second metro line are being constructed whilst the central rail station and teaching hospital are being re-built.

Nathalie Appere writes in her essay “...none of these developments make any sense if they leave anybody behind. Their sole purpose is to strengthen our cohesion and serve the humanistic values on which our city is founded. This offers a powerful antidote to the decline of civic connections and withdrawal into the individualism that breeds populism in all its forms.”

The mayor has recently described the launching of urban renewal projects in the deprived neighbourhoods of Maurepas and Le Blosne with 500 million euros secured for investments as the achievement of her first term of which she is most proud.

She has introduced a participatory budget process which she describes as a ‘minor revolution, exceeding all expectations. Over the three editions over 2,000 projects have been submitted and voting is now up to 16,000.”

Mayor Appéré urges some risk-taking to address despair and abstention. “More trust should be placed in the intelligence, experience and expertise of local residents. Participation is not the enemy of representation: rather, it has become its indispensible corollary.”


Extract from Mayor Appéré’s essay:
My daily experience – over the best part of five years now – bears witness to the truth of this insight. Mayors live a hundred lives at once. They experience their city’s successes and failures as though they were their own. They listen to the aspirations and complaints of their constituents just as they would those of their friends and relations. They have to address day-to-day problems whilst also considering long-term issues; finding solutions for a family in desperate circumstances, even as they’re thinking about planning for the next twenty years.

This task would be impossible were it not for the fact that as mayors, we are above all leaders of a team – a team whose members emerge from our offices to do their very best to transform our policy orientations into action and coordinate our decisions. MORE


Typical tribute:
I would like to support the Mayor of my city Rennes for the world Mayor Price.
For several years now, she is actively working to ensure better equality between the different parts of the city. One example to show her dedication is that every year since she’s the mayor she dedicates 5% of the city budget to achieve projects proposed by the citizens themselves to improve the life in the city (culture, gardens, ecology…). She makes sure that each part of the city gets at least two projects. Each year, thanks to this event, neighbors meet and this creates bounding between older and younger people that would not necessarily meet without this event. She also works on improving ecology in Rennes (electric buses, creation of green spaces…).

Apart from theses two points I’ve just listed, I would like to say that she is a Mayor really close to her citizens which she always says hello to, and she also takes part with her family to the events and festivals organized in the city. She is a Mayor to whom anyone can speak to. Thanks for your consideration, MORE


Further reading
ESSAY | TRIBUTES | INTERVIEW