NOW WHO’S BEING NAÏVE, KAY? Zohran Mamdani Can’t Ruin New York City.

In the mid-1990s, New York was well past its industrial and shipping heyday, but the signs were still all around. The city was grittier than it would soon be—we were right on the cusp of the major decline in crime that would sweep through nearly all American cities. It was so gritty, in fact, that my parents forbade me from applying to college in New York. They thought the city was too pricey and dangerous, even though they loved it.

Today, the city is much richer and fussier than it was. Parents are still fretting about its dangers and expense. Mayors come and go—remember when Rudy Giuliani was “America’s mayor”?—and New York remains fundamentally itself.

Zohran Mamdani won the 2025 mayoral election on a platform that included fare-free buses, city-owned grocery stores, and a rent freeze for rent-stabilized units, plus equity-centered education policy and an oddly status-quo policing plan for a one-time defunder/abolitionist. As this issue of Reason unpacks, there are many reasons to fear such policies will be ineffective at best and deeply counterproductive at worst. And as my parents’ diktat shows, when governance and policy get bad enough, that can scare off potential residents and visitors alike.

But a single mayor can’t ruin New York City, because New York City is not reducible to policy choices.

John Lindsay has just entered the conversation: “In the midst of an economic boom, crime exploded. Instead of reforming what had, in fact, been the best big city school system in America, he left it in tatters. He promised to better incorporate African Americans but left the city polarized.”