Mamdani Rewrites Sinatra, and New York
Replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
Zohran Mamdani campaigned on tight promises about cutting the cost of living. In his inaugural address on Thursday, he went far broader, laying out an expansive governing philosophy of replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
Perhaps the most revealing passage came when Mamdani reached for the ultimate civic cliché, Frank Sinatra’s “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere, It’s up to you, New York, New York.”
“If what Sinatra said is true, let us prove that anyone can make it in New York—and anywhere else too. Let us prove that when a city belongs to the people, there is no need too small to be met, no person too sick to be made healthy, no one too alone to feel like New York is their home.”
Sinatra’s New York is often seen as a hard-won badge of honor. In a clever rhetorical move, Mamdani redefines “making it” as something the city itself should ensure.
A Hard City with Harsh Trade-Offs
New York has never been easy, a fact intertwined with its status as one of the world’s great cities. Its magnetism comes from the density of opportunity and the intensity of competition: more jobs, more capital, more culture, and more people willing to work absurd hours in cramped spaces for a chance at something bigger.
Mamdani’s election is a reflection that New Yorkers increasingly feel that doing everything “right” no longer reliably adds up to stability, which is why his promise that the city will shoulder more of life’s basic risks resonates so deeply.
As my colleague John Ketcham recently wrote, Mamdani’s policies could “reward incumbency at the expense of the newcomer strivers who for generations have fuelled New York’s dynamism in pursuit of riches that, in turn, enriched their fellow citizens.”
This is not an argument for celebrating suffering, but rather for recognizing trade-offs. When prices and stress overwhelm the upside, people leave. Since the pandemic-induced exodus, the city is growing again.
A City that Provides
Mamdani’s is “a vision of a city that is more and more handling the costs of living for its residents,” David Freedlander writes, “It’s free buses today, but why not free subways tomorrow? A four-year rent freeze for now, but only for now.”
Meanwhile, many of the city’s cost pressures stem from policy.
The high cost of housing often mentioned as a key driver for residents leaving the city is a product of supply not keeping up with demand. The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan is a modest step toward liberalization, but regulation still dominates, making New York more expensive to build housing than just about anywhere in the world.
In addition to New York being the second most regulated state in the nation, it’s also has the highest state and local tax collections of any state: per capita tax collections top $12,600, twenty percent higher than California, while spending per capita exceeds every state but Alaska.
The question, then, is not whether New York should help its poorest residents, it already does, but what happens when a city built on mobility, risk-taking, and private investment tries to turn its safety net into something closer to a promise of outcomes.
Redefining the Role of the City
There is a difference between a city that mitigates hardship and one that tries to guarantee success. The first asks how to ensure people are not destroyed by bad luck. The second asks how to engineer a distribution of outcomes that feels morally acceptable, regardless of the incentives it creates.
Mamdani gestures toward something closer to the second model—using the power of the city to assure results. That vision collides with the constraints of a mobile tax base, a finite budget, and the need to retain investment and high-earning residents rather than driving them elsewhere.
New York does owe its residents safety, competent governance, and a floor below which people should not be allowed to fall. But it also has to protect the conditions that make it New York in the first place: a dense private economy, a reputation for seriousness and performance, and the sense that success here is earned.
Sinatra’s older New York offers an individual a chance, not a guarantee. Mamdani seeks a city that promises more stability to all. The risk is that in trying to remove the sting of failure, New York will also change the meaning of success.
Friday’s Links:
Streetsblog caught up with the new DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn.
In a long profile, New York Magazine’s David Freedlander wondered if Mamdani was ready for the actual job.
Mamdani named Kamar Samuels as NYC schools chancellor, reversed course on ending mayoral control, Chalkbeat reports.
Mamdani’s first orders focus on housing and undoing Adams’s decisions, the New York Times reports.
2026 New York City Inauguration Ceremony video and prepared remarks.
Brilliant analysis on the tension between guaranteed outcomes and earned success. The reframing of Sinatra's line is such a clever rhetorical move, but I dunno if most people realize how much it shifts the underlying promise from opportunity to entitlement. When cities start guaranteeing results instead of mitigatin hardship, they usually end up pricing out the very dynamism that made them attractive in the first place. Saw this play out in Portland where similar policies unintentionally accelerated the exact problems they aimed to solve.