January 26, 2026
To: Joe Mathews
Fr: Stephen Erickson
Re: LA City Charter Citizen Assembly
Joe,
I am pleased to learn that a Citizens Assembly will be part of the Los Angeles city charter review process.
As you know, The Economist annually ranks the world’s most livable cities. The top cites for 2025 were Copenhagen, Vienna and Zurich. As Los Angelinos reconsider their city charter, is it not essential to examine how the political systems of the world’s most successful cities are organized?
Since district size has become a major focus of discussion in the LA charter review process, the following comparisons may be interesting:
City Council Sizes and Representation Ratios
City Council Size City Residents per
Councilor
Copenhagen 55 11,873
Vienna 100 20,284
Zurich 125 3,472
Los Angeles 15 253,333
As these numbers suggest, the world’s most successful cities operate in a way that is fundamentally different than American cities like Los Angeles.
The governance of many of the best run cities abroad rests on large cross-sections of city residents who serve part time, rather than solely on full-time professional politicians.
The advantages of such models are self-evident: 1) residents are better represented and councils are more diverse 2) the role of money in politics can be massively reduced, disempowering special interests and making elections far more fair. In my opinion, whether or not models like the above are considered reflects the extent to which Los Angeles is serious about democracy.
Urban Americans are long overdue for some serious soul searching about how the political systems of their cites are structured. Examining successful cities abroad can open up discussions about other important topics, such as mayoral appointment and authority, the appointment of other city offices, subsidiarity (devolving power and or administration to a city’s sub-regions), the role of legislative committees, and proportional representation.
Obviously, a discussion that examines how successful foreign cities are run could go in a number of different directions and take up a significant amount of time.
I would be happy to lead a discussion about the overall practice of democracy in successful cities abroad. I don’t need financial compensation except for travel expenses. Otherwise, I could lead the discussion via Zoom, but I would prefer to attend in person. Ideally, we would have at least an hour, and more if the jury finds the subject matter to be important.
I think I could find some officials from successful global cities to testify before your assembly also, if you want a more expanded discussion. We could either schedule some of these officials onto the agenda ahead of time, or if the Assembly is at all self-directed, they might decide, themselves, what areas of discussion require more explication. In that case, I might be able to recruit an official or two on short notice. In that case, I could speak on the first weekend and we could leave the second weekend open to possibility of foreign participation.
Here are links to a couple of relevant articles I have published: https://www.nationalcivicleague.org/ncr-article/save-our-cities-its-time-to-make-americas-urban-
political-systems-far-more-democratic/
https://www.pacificresearch.org/u-s-cities-can-learn-from-stockholms-citizen-democracy/
I am happy to help in any way I can.
Best wishes,
Stephen Erickson
Founder, Cities Rising
603-502-4861
