New York’s Next Mayor Must Put Heads Together

With early voting underway and election day around the corner, New York City is at a crossroads, faced with a chasmic choice between leaders who differ by generation, ideology and vision for the future. Missing from the discourse, and the candidate platforms, are the time-tested ingredients of New York’s success: a capacity for compromise and collaboration in the service of common purpose.

As we head to the polls, let’s listen for and learn from the rhymes of history. This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the city’s finest moments of civic cooperation: the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC), the public-private partnership that rescued New York from bankruptcy. 

The fiscal crisis of that era was severe; years of deficits and disinvestment eroded the tax base, drove residents and businesses out of the city and left New York teetering on default. In 1975, when the federal government largely refused to help — 50 years ago this week, the Daily News would memorialize the president’s “Ford to City: Drop Dead” snub — Gov. Hugh Carey looked to an unlikely coalition of bankers, union heads and local leaders to negotiate New York’s survival. Ultimately, the banks restructured the city’s short-term obligations into longer-term debt, the unions froze wages and invested their pensions in the new MAC bonds and city officials agreed to budget cuts and state oversight. By staving off collapse and restoring investor and public confidence — over 20 years, the MAC would generate $10 billion in bond proceeds for New York — these agreements stabilized the city and paved the way for decades of growth.  

The spirit of ’75 was about more than horse trading or financial engineering; it was a feat of civic imagination, rooted in the conviction that seemingly disparate interests — public and private, city and state — must work together towards a better future. 50 years later, New York needs that spirit — one guided by give and take, pragmatism over pieties and shared resolve in the face of shared challenges — again.

Of course, New York today is on incomparably stronger ground than it was half a century ago. It is more diverse and dynamic in every sense, from the composition of our population to a diversified economy powered by a broad set of industries — finance, technology, health care, life sciences, media, hospitality, the arts and a multi-billion nonprofit sector that employs one in five New Yorkers. That dynamism is a source of strength; it has also outpaced investments in the physical and social infrastructure needed to sustain it, driving the cost of living, especially the cost of housing, beyond the reach of many.

When the shocks of recent decades — 9/11, the financial crash, Superstorm Sandy, the pandemic — tested the city’s resilience, New York rebounded. Today’s exigencies recall those of the 1970s because they are simmering, stubborn and structural: Housing and childcare that are too scarce and expensive, strained infrastructure, public safety and quality-of-life concerns and looming budget gaps made worse by a hostile administration in Washington, D.C.

So what does the spirit of ’75 look like in 2025? We know what it is not: claims of singular management prowess to fix the city, vertical videos suggesting that public and private interests are at odds. Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve often heard from the leading mayoral candidates. 

There are promising signs in frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s quiet listening and learning tour. The Democratic Socialist has recently evidenced evolving enthusiasms: for some private sector resources for housing, for Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to remain in the job. In these and other ways, he has signaled that he may just be collaboration, if not compromise, curious.  

Fortunately, when it comes to pragmatic partnerships, public officials need not look far for inspiration. New York is awash in creative constellations of every shape and size. To name a few:

Congestion pricing. After years of delay, New York became the first U.S. city to adopt congestion pricing — an ambitious effort to reduce traffic, improve air quality and fund mass transit. The policy emerged from lengthy negotiations between state and city leaders, the MTA, business groups, environmental advocates and community representatives. It was an important act of joint problem-solving, and a success: traffic volume and delays are down, transit ridership is up, and the program is on track to generate $500 million in its first year for system repairs and improvements. Notably, the benefits are shared across New York and between the city and tristate suburbs. With New York at the center of a regional economy, many future initiatives, from the Gateway tunnel (now under imminent threat from the Trump administration) and Port Authority Bus Terminal developments to the 2026 World Cup, will require similar alliances.

The Empire Technology Prize, launched by The Clean Fight, a nonprofit climate tech accelerator, and supported by the state’s energy and research development authority department and corporate sponsors, represents another kind of partnership: one that harnesses public and private investment to catalyze outsized innovation. This relatively modest $10 million prize targets one of New York’s greatest climate challenges: the tall and aging buildings that account for 70% of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions, often from inefficient heat systems using fossil fuels. Like many prizes, this one has stimulated far more value than the dollars awarded, including seven demonstration projects deploying breakthrough clean heating solutions. In 1975, “public-private” meant business and government putting their heads together. Today, New York’s nonprofit sector is at the vital center. It is the backbone of the city’s social safety net, arts sector, and, as the Clean Fight demonstrates, commercial innovation and climate change issues.

The Brooklyn Marine Terminal offers a promising model for equitable, large-scale, mixed-use economic development. This 100+ acre industrial site, neglected since the MAC days, is being reimagined through a complex, ambitious and multi-stakeholder planning process involving the state, city the city’s Economic Development Corporation, the Port Authority, local elected officials, unions, private developers and community stakeholders, including local nonprofit advocates and businesses. The $3.5 billion project seeks to revitalize this stretch of Brooklyn waterfront into a 21st century all-electric port and in the process create good jobs, light industrial and commercial businesses, new public open space, shoreline access and thousands of units of housing, much of them affordable. The lessons are many, among them: Community-led planning, while cacophonous and contentious, is essential. And the creation of expansive, imaginative infrastructure requires private-sector participation.

Housing, housing, housing. With a vacancy rate stuck near 1%, housing is the defining challenge of our time — and the linchpin of affordability. Rising to the challenge will require partnerships of every stripe: better city and state alignment on zoning, public land and tax incentives; cooperation between developers, nonprofits and unions to speed production; and creative financing to build colossally more while ensuring it remains accessible. As the passage of City of Yes reminds us, this is an all-hands-on-deck moment to protect tenants, preserve and improve existing stock, and dramatically expand supply. Whether these new initiatives allow NYCHA to repair current units and construct new ones, incorporate housing into many more mixed-use developments or support significant rezoning in places like Long Island City, this is the moment for a bold and inclusive consortium.

These examples are different in scope but unified in ethos: the public, private and nonprofit sectors ought not be adversaries but allies — partners in the collective project that is New York City. We recall the MAC of 1975 not for nostalgia, but for renewal: a social compact that commits us to each other and to our common future.