Mayors can and must play a decisive role for peace because ‘they are daily artisans of the cohesion of our cities’. Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, the city hosting the initiative of the Community of Sant'Egidio (the international meeting ‘Imagining Peace’) underlines how not infrequently the mayor remains the only institution of reference in a destroyed city. ‘We have a duty to imagine a methodology: those who have been here for a long time, those who flee (no one leaves their land for the pleasure of doing so), are part of the same community’, together with young people who wonder “if life will be possible on this earth”. Cities ‘must look to the future’.
