March 21, 2025

Roosevelt Island cable car. Photo credit:Alexander Spatari iStock / Getty Images Plus 

This week’s hot word is “Abundance”—the title of a new book by the New York Times’ Ezra Klein and the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson. They are pitching Democrats on an alternative to the stifling obsession with rules and regulations.

The authors, influential liberals, argue that Democrats need to be able to run for national office based on their success governing cities—something they acknowledge is impossible right now. Their alternative is a society where key goods are abundant: energy is cheap and clean, housing springs up wherever you need it, and the government knows how to get out of the way of the market. Conservatives may not buy the whole argument—particularly the dream of living without trade-offs—but some of this sounds familiar.

And the notes of change in Abundance do offer some hope for cities, and for readers of this newsletter. American politics right now is defined by reflexive hatred between the left and the right. But when you look at what New York’s left-of-center mayoral candidates are offering, there’s evidence of that same pragmatic turn.

It’s something common-sense conservatives should consider celebrating and supporting as a return of sanity. The alternative—mocking Democrats for flip-flopping or hypocrisy—may be more satisfying, but if we assume candidates can’t change their minds based on changes in circumstances and information available, we’ll have no chance of changing their minds either.

The Manhattan Institute has lauded Mayor Adams' City of Yes housing plan as a good start but lacking ambition. Now, every single candidate, including the socialist, is proposing much more ambitious programs. Some even have a good understanding of what it will take to get there: stripping red tape, loosening zoning, and more.

The left has also finally acknowledged that it’s not just the perception of crime they need to deal with, and that the mentally ill are not in a position to help themselves. The Manhattan Institute has some good ideas on how to fix that, and slowly but surely, the city and state are embracing quality-of-life policing, amending the laws on involuntary confinement, and changing those that release recidivists as soon as they are arrested.

Republicans don’t seem likely to field a serious candidate for mayor this year, so right-of-center voters need to think hard about which Democrats seem open to new ideas for their party. Shooting for abundance, rather than regulating scarcity, isn’t a bad place to start.

From Left: Andrew Cuomo, Adrienne Adams, Eric Adams, Brad Lander, Scott Stringer, Zellnor Myrie, Jessica Ramos, Zohran Mamdani, Michael Blake and Whitney Tilson. Images via Getty

If you’d like to learn more about the candidates, the New York Editorial Board, of which both MI Fellow Nicole Gelinas and I are members, has so far interviewed Brad Lander,  Zohran Mamdani, Jessica Ramos, Whitney Tilson and Jim Walden. 

State Senator Zellnor Myrie. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Zellnor Myrie, a senator from Brooklyn, is not getting the kind of attention he should, Ben Krauss argues in Slow Boring.

Myrie has positioned himself as a moderate, pro-growth, tough-on-crime candidate, but so far has not gained much traction with those paying attention to politics. He’s raised about $3.8 million in total, thanks to contributions from some 4,000 voters in this election, which puts him behind his opponents, but definitely in the race. 

Myrie could be the candidate for those who like the policies of Adams without the drama. But he’s short on executive experience and spent most of his career pushing a firmly progressive legislative agenda before his more recent YIMBY turn. 

As I wrote before, this is the sort of political moment when it makes sense to look at the proposed policies and give the benefit of the doubt that candidates can change their perspectives.

Draft Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, Via NYC Department of City Planning.

Photo Credit: MDoculus iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus

Elections: America’s large cities, dominated by single-party politics, would benefit from reforming local elections to switch to party-list proportional representation, George Washington University lecturer Jack Santucci and Manhattan Institute Director of Cities John Ketcham propose in a new Manhattan Institute report.

The system—wherein a party receives a percentage of seats in proportion to its share of the vote—could give local coalitions leverage on issues that do not track neatly with national politics and open new opportunities for bipartisan or cross-partisan local democracy.

5 Ideas to Make NYC More Affordable for Families, from the Center for an Urban Future, proposes to stem the exodus of families with small children from NYC. The population of children under 5 declined by more than 18% between 2020 and 2023, a trend that was exacerbated by—but is continuing past—the pandemic.

“As they raise children, families also tend to be especially invested in the long-term success of the city,” the report states. “They contribute to stable communities by increasing civic engagement, boosting local economies through spending, and driving demand for family-friendly amenities like quality schools, parks and safe neighborhoods.”

Gothamist wrote it up, but in a nutshell, they suggest building or freeing up 10,000 three-bedroom units, universal 3-K and Pre-K, summer day camps, improved middle schools, and more public-private collaboration on childcare.

Subway Safety: Vital City has a paper out on what to do (and not to do) about subway safety. They point out that subways should be for transit, and that there should be unified governance, better maintenance, more effective use of police, and better response to the homeless and people in mental health crises.

What they don’t want to see is reactive surges of non-transit cops on the subway, investments in scanners for guns, and a reliance on enforcing fare-beating as a violent crime prevention strategy. (Andrew Cuomo’s subway safety plan appears to be entirely based on the Vital City paper.)

Turnstiles at Longwood Avenue Subway station in the Bronx, 1984. Photo Credit: Ricky Flores/Getty Images

This week my colleague Nicole Gelinas asked in the New York Times: Why is it so hard to accomplish obvious things when it comes to public transit?

“Part of returning to pre-2020 levels of public safety must be policing—but not the stopgap policing that Mr. Adams has engaged in.” 

The NYPD’s transit cop headcount of about 2,700 officers is “well below the 4,100 in the mid-1990s, a time when crime sharply fell from its peak a few years earlier,” and the mayor has been relying on overtime and periodic surges of street cops. “We need more transit cops, and we shouldn’t put up with so much low-level antisocial behavior in the subways,” she writes.

When it comes to fare beating, in addition to new entrance designs, former Governor Cuomo’s subway safety plan proposes new civilian MTA inspectors to handle fare enforcement—over which he would have no control.

“Moving to a proof-of-payment system, just like the MTA has long done on select buses, makes a lot of sense,” Gelinas emailed. “It's fine to have civilians do a lot of this work in the system, as long as they are backed by police close by, have the option of asking police to take over if they feel a specific danger for some reason, and as long as the NYPD continues to do undercover work at the faregate.”

Meanwhile, the MTA is getting attention for tinkering around the edges of its problems — for instance,  replacing benches with weird leaning bars at West 4th Street. Commuters are not amused.

“The leaning bars are hostile infrastructure. We should be able to offer elderly people, pregnant women, people carrying children a place to sit down,” Gelinas emails. “A bench with divider slats so that people don't lie down is fine, but to get rid of a bench altogether because you don't want people loitering on it shows that you've lost the battle; just enforce the laws against loitering, lying down, using drugs, etc. etc.”

Photo Credit: James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images

Knickerbocker Bar & Grill. Photo Credit: Liena Zagare

You can talk to new friends at the bar at the Knickerbocker Bar & Grill at 33 University Place, one of Manhattan’s last true neighborhood joints, or talk ideas with old friends at the tables in the bar area, a perfect spot for after work drinks and conversation.