Mayor attraction ... does Boris have tourist appeal? Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Guardian
If a big-city mayor makes a positive difference to the day-to-day life of his citizens, he'll end up making a difference to your holiday, too, says Jon Henley. Or at least, he'll give you the impression he has - which is, after all, what counts.
Take Rudy Giuliani in New York. Two terms of zero tolerance in a city that many wary tourists considered as the murder 'n' mugging capital of the world throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, and the Big Apple was suddenly a city everyone wanted to visit. No one slept rough any more, Times Square was cleaned up, and above all tourists no longer risked getting held up at knifepoint when they strayed more than 100 yards from Fifth Avenue.
In fact, there's now considerable dispute as to just how much Giuliani's policies really did drive down New York's crime rate (it's thought the presence of an extra 7,000 federally-funded cops and a nationwide economic upturn may just have helped a little), but at the very least the mayor's attitude did succeed in radically changing public perceptions of his city at home and abroad.
In Paris, Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe has introduced some fun events. One idea, Paris Plage, in which a 3.5km stretch of the banks of the Seine is, every summer, transformed into an urban beach complete with cafes, deckchairs, and sandpits - has been successfully copied around the world.
That's been very popular with Parisians unable to escape the capital for les grandes vacances, and with the tourists who flock to the city in August in part, at least, because of the absence of Parisians. And the brand-new Velib scheme, launched this summer after being successfully pioneered in Lyon, has made over 10,000 bikes available, almost free, at 750 racks dotted around the city.
That could make a pleasant difference to your stay, providing you're happy taking your chances with Paris's notoriously eccentric (read anarchic) drivers. And it will certainly give you the opportunity to judge for yourself just how much mayor Delanoe's widely contested main mayoral initiative - a massive road re-modelling programme and a new tram system aimed at reducing car use and traffic congestion in the permanently-clogged city - has actually worked. (Not a lot.)
Mayor Delanoe, of course, had the advantage of a public transport system that actually worked. London's Ken Livingstone didn't, but he has, through the congestion charge and the money it raises, made an undeniable difference to the way we move around.
The tube may still be a monumental disgrace in a city of London's stature, and unforgivably expensive to boot, but at least the buses now work - rather well, in fact - and walking round the centre of town is a bit more of a pleasure than a penance. Ken's not bad for fun events, either: the Tour de France was a coup that tourists appreciated just as much as Londoners.
So what might the Conservative's big blond hope, Boris Johnson, offer if elected? His early pronouncements have, it's true, not been all that promising: cut crime, improve public transport, boost low-cost housing. Boring. But it's plain the great man hasn't really given the subject much thought yet. For a mind as original as his, urban beaches and congestion zones must surely be just the start. Bring on, perhaps, street signs in Latin. Any other ideas?
