Now that Zohran Mamdani has been elected the next mayor of New York City, it may be tempting to think that voters expect him to work wonders: freeze rents, open city-run grocery stores, make buses free and raise taxes on the rich. But it would be a mistake to read their choice as a simple verdict on aspirational policy ideas, ideas that even a strong mayor may not have the authority to pass. The real question a new generation of New York voters answered by choosing Mamdani is this: How does a city daydream about its future?
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, first elected to her post at age 36 and reelected without opposition on Tuesday, stands out as a possible model for Mamdani since her election four years ago. She campaigned predominantly on promises a mayor could hardly keep on her own. She called for free public transit; she later got federal grant money and negotiated with the state-run transit system to only temporarily making three city bus lines free. She promised to fight climate change; the city now has a Green New Deal, but the threat of sea-level rise to coastal communities like Boston will be determined largely by decisions made at the state, national and global level. And she promised rent control; rents have climbed since she took office and construction has declined, notwithstanding incentives she pushed to create new affordable housing.
And yet Wu’s popularity has soared as she has stood up to Congress and President Donald Trump to protect the city’s immigrants and universities. She won a preliminary election in September against a billionaire’s heir by a whopping 49 points.
Whatever policy promises remain unkept, the point is that Wu, like Mamdani, represented – and still represents – a new vision for Boston’s future. She is the first woman and first person of color ever elected mayor in a city long known for anointing old guard Italian-American and Irish-American men to positions of power. Like Mamdani, she is relatively young, energetic and, perhaps most poignantly, speaks to the values of a new generation. I suspect many Bostonians under 40 don’t care that she can’t single-handedly solve climate change in the city; what they care about is that she shares their moral clarity and urgency about it.
Similarly, to dwell on the ways Zohran Mamdani might fail to deliver lower rents to New Yorkers or the fact that he needs the state legislature to hike taxes on the wealthy is pragmatic political analysis. That can be appealing to policy wonks like me who want politicians to be accountable for their promises. But it also misses the real lesson we are getting about municipal politics from the rise of these figures. Major American cities have become largely unaffordable for the young, creative, hungry people who are their lifeblood, the ones who come for the opportunities, culture and confluences of people, and who remake those cities anew. The people who, irrespective of who is in the mayor’s mansion, are the drivers of the next waves of urban progress. And when someone like Mamdani or Wu gives voice to their often-neglected values, frustrations and dreams, they get fired up – even if those dreams straddle the line of delusion. Who can blame them for projecting onto politicians the possibility of what their cities can and should be?
Bina Venkataraman, an author and journalist, is the former Boston Globe editorial page editor. She is the author of “The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age.”
