The End of the American City
31st May 2026
In 1961, New York City commenced a new urban plan that included massive downzoning. To give a sense of how much urban growth has been stunted compared to previous trends, before the downzoning, Manhattan had 7 Congressional districts. Today it has 2.5.
Mamdani is going them one better. He’s chasing all of the productive people out of the city; by the end of his term, New York will have about a million freeloaders and politicians (but I repeat myself) and not much else.