Manhattan Institute Publishes Policy Playbook for NYC's Next Mayor

NEW YORK, NY — This past fall, the Manhattan Institute (MI) launched its New York City: Reborn initiative to focus research and writing on the urgent need to restore the city’s health and prosperity. Now, with a mayoral election approaching, an unprecedented crime spike, and New Yorkers fleeing the city during an extended period of remote work, MI has published A Policy Playbook for the Next Mayor under its NYC: Reborn initiative and will host a week-long series of events dedicated to rebuilding New York. 

Providing concrete, practical measures that the next mayor can implement to turbocharge Gotham’s recovery, the playbook is comprised of individual briefs by MI experts focused on the most pressing issues facing the city today—housing, education, budget, transportation, the small business environment, and public safety. 

Housing – With red tape strangling new construction and scarce housing driving up costs, senior fellow Eric Kober provides a blueprint for more affordable and available housing across the city by: 

• allowing more accessory dwelling units

• encouraging more duplexes and triplexes

• rezoning obsolete manufacturing areas

• facilitating microunits

• and allowing residential buildings to be as large as office buildings. 

Education – As Mayor de Blasio eases school closing rules and schools begin to fully reopen, education policy director Ray Domanico urges the next mayor to offer the city’s diverse student body a wider array of educational opportunities by: 

• embracing educational pluralism

• focusing on quality and performance through fair methods of performance management

• demanding flexibility from school unions

• reviewing all DOE contracts

• and prioritizing real improvement in underserved communities. 

Budget – With NYC’s long-term fiscal condition in a perilous state, even after billions of dollars in federal aid, George M. Yeager fellow and City Journal senior editor Steven Malanga offers prescriptions for stabilizing the city’s finances by: 

• prioritizing the Program to Eliminate the Gap

• bringing down public-employee health care costs

• offering public employees benefits more in line with those at the state level

• reducing the size of the workforce through cuts, attrition, and productivity gains

• encouraging private investment in NYCHA

• and asking the state to invoke the FCB to make cost-cutting politically easier.    

Transportation - Building on decades of pre-pandemic progress, senior fellow Nicole Gelinas suggests the next mayor use mass transit to rebuild confidence among the public by: 

• managing motor vehicle traffic through raising bridge tolls and parking fees, and congestion pricing

• building better bus infrastructure

• creating safe spaces for cyclists and pedestrians

• rethinking highway uses especially for trucks

• reestablishing 24-hour subway service

• and adjusting traffic reinforcement between civilian agencies and the NYPD. 

Small business - While starting and growing a small business in New York wasn’t easy before the pandemic, the shutdown took a huge toll on small businesses. Michael Hendrix, state and local policy director, urges the next mayor to make NYC one of the best places to start and run a small business by: 

• helping startups tap into existing private and public resources

• creating markets for microloans

• lifting barriers to starting and running a business

• and creating a one-stop shop for complying with all business regulation, licensing, and permitting.   

Public Safety - With NYC seeing in 2020 the largest single-year spikes in shootings and homicides in more than 50 years, senior fellow Rafael Mangual and director of MI’s policing and public safety initiative Hannah Meyers argue that the next mayor should commit to securing the city’s streets and subways as part of a comprehensive public safety strategy to: 

• reinforce the ranks of the NYPD, with a focus on attracting highly educated, motivated recruits

• build out a community policing strategy that is oriented around the public’s concerns—particularly regarding the quality of life

• work diligently to address legal skepticism of the police and law, particularly in minority communities

• and emphasize more (and better) supervision of the city’s seriously mentally ill inhabitants. 

Beginning on April 19, the Manhattan Institute will host a week-long series of virtual events featuring journalists, practitioners, and MI experts assembling their expertise to delve further into these issues and strategize concrete solutions. For more information or to join us, visit us here. 

About New York City: Reborn 

New York City: Reborn is a Manhattan Institute project that encompasses research, journalism, and event programming. Through this initiative, the institute convenes business, civic, academic, and civil-society leaders from around the city with MI scholars to discuss issues key to the city’s recovery. Post-coronavirus, MI envisions a growing New York City with a thriving economy, healthy finances, accessible housing, effective infrastructure, flourishing education, safe streets, and increasing competitiveness. New York City: Reborn will help turn that vision into reality. Click here to learn more. 

For more information on our “Policy Playbook for New York’s Next Mayor” or the New York City: Reborn initiative, click here.