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We visit the mayors of cities from Helsinki to Bogota, from Los Angeles to Rotterdam and Cape Town to discover why citizens are putting their faith in the ability of local government and a charismatic mayor to deliver a better quality of life and solutions to 21st Century problems.

We report from the first World Parliament of Mayors that was convened in the Hague in September and which seeks to give mayors a stronger political voice internationally.

The driving idea is that cities, where the majority of the world population now lives, have much in common with one another and that the challenges they face – migration, health, trade, climate change, security, terrorism – are issues that cross national borders.

Mayors are highly accountable democratically, with a strong imperative to get things done. Often they are in charge of cities with populations of many millions – but they are often more free and less politically partisan than their colleagues in national government. Increasingly it is mayors and their administrations who are taking the lead on solutions for housing, cleaner air and water, crime reduction and the ‘greening’ of cities.

But does the office of mayor confer too much power to one individual? We look at the rise of women majors - why is it that the mayors of Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Cologne, Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest and a swathe of cities across the world now have women mayors?