Brent Warr, the mayor of Gulfport, Mississippi

Brent Warr, the mayor of Gulfport, Mississippi, who participated energetically in the Mississippi Renewal Forum after Hurricane Katrina, announced in March that he will not seek reelection. The Sun Herald said Warr “is facing Katrina fraud charges based on a homeowner’s grant he received for damage to his beachfront home,” and he decided to “focus on his legal issues.” From a new urbanist perspective, “Warr was pretty good,” according to planning consultant Ann Daigle. After the Renewal Forum, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. won a bid to carry out major planning in Gulfport, southern Mississippi’s largest city. However, among new urbanists working in the region, there was some unhappiness that Warr “backslid” on implementation of the SmartCode because of resistance from a developer. One of the candidates for mayor, former Hancock Bank CEO George Schloegel, “is a visionary and one of the few people that recognized rail and streetcars were viable systems,” Daigle says. Schloegel was a key figure in an effort to relocate the University of Southern Mississippi campus to a site where it could anchor a walkable neighborhood.