After spells at Harvard, Oxford and McKinsey, Pete Buttigieg came home to South Bend, IN. In 2012, aged just 29, he became mayor on a promise of revitalizing downtown and tackling urban decay.
Under Buttigieg, old Studebaker buildings are being revived and converted into mixed use spaces, including for tech start-ups. One-way streets have been scrapped and altered to become more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists. Buttigieg introduced a public art installation called River Lights on the main waterway. He has tried to make government more systematic by gathering data on everything from rubbish collection to gunshots.
And his daring 1,000 houses in 1,000 days initiative demolished or repaired abandoned homes. “When he announced that, I thought he was crazy,” Colwell said. “In fact, I think I told him at the time, why would you set a goal so ambitious? A thousand homes in a city this size in a thousand days? He did it. He surpassed the goal.
“He’s been a breath of fresh air in this country and he’s done a lot of good for South Bend. A lot more people are living downtown; there are three or four buildings being converted into luxury apartments. There’s no doubt the city is better now than when he took office. There’s a sense of excitement that there hasn’t been in South Bend for many years.”
OK, so he’s a guy who married a guy with all that entails which gets us to the headline.
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