50 new york | october 12–25, 2020
sometime soon, even as office workers
still give each other latitude and exchange
muffled greetings through their masks, you
may find yourself waiting for an elevator. If
the building is old, with a cramped lobby,
the line begins outside, where it crisscrosses
other ones, so that the sidewalk resembles
Thanksgiving check-in at JFK. You maneu-
ver to avoid vendors and delivery guys,
maybe even the first returning tourists, all
overflowing the sidewalk. The morning
jam-up becomes severe enough that local
businesses petition to ban privatevehicles
from that block, possibly neighboringones,
too. Employers start staggeringworkday
hours, and pressure mounts to imposethe
congestion pricing that was intendedto
thin traffic but then deferred. That,inturn,
means overhauling the inchoatemessof
bridge and tunnel tolls. With the subway in
distress, busways and bike lanes proliferate.
To satisfy employees who want tominimize
their commutes, businesses openouter-
borough satellites, energizingshopping
streets that were badly in need ofa boost.
Soon, we’re living in a different NewYork,
and maybe a better one.
The past seven months haveprovided
astonishing lessons in urban transforma-
tion, radiating from elevators andsidewalks
to the city’s economic foundations.Direness
has blown a hole in New Yorkers’armorof
cynicism and habit. We’ve come toappreci-
ate how fragile even a great city is,howdeli-
cate the gearworks that keep thewhole
machine clattering along. We’vealsoseen
how sturdy it can be. When the virusswept
through, New Yorkers beat it back,turning
one of the most dangerous spotsinthe
nation into one of the safest—temporarily,
at least. That combination of failure,epiph-
any, improvisation, and determination
gives us a once-in-a-lifetime shotat mold-
ing the next phase of the city’s evolution.
A little over a year from now, themayor,
two-thirds of the City Council, fourof the
fi ve borough presidents, and the comptrol-
ler will hit their term limits. Thepeople
who replace them will take chargeof a tot-
tering metropolis that is simultaneously
tr ying to right and redefine itself—tobuild
back better, to borrow Joe Biden’scatch-
phrase. What kind of city materializes
in the 2020s will depend in parton how
th ose leaders balance the drivetoward
gl obal-capital status with the needto care
for those who are left out of that prosperity.
For nearly seven years, we’ve hada mayor
who campaigned on behalf of thepoor,the
marginalized, and the outer-boroughsbut
pr esided over an ever-shinier cityof manic
wealth and grinding inequities. Forall his
rh etorical anti-capitalism, Billde Blasio
yo ked his affordable-housing aspirations
toreal-estate-industrytrickle-down.His
mosttriumphantrezoning,bulkingup
MidtownEastanddwarfingtheEmpire
St ateBuilding,servesmostlyhighfinance.
And hiscommitmentto safer,greener,
moref lexiblestreetshasbeenf lickeringat
best.Thehistoryof thosedisappointments,
and thedislocationsofcovid,present
deBl asio’ssuccessorwitha chanceto ask
so mefundamentalquestionsaboutNewYork’s moral future: Should the highest
and best use of a patch of urban dirt always
be reckoned in dollars per square foot, or
can equity, empathy, and fairness figure
into the formula too?
“In a moment of crisis, people see the
world around them differently,” says Shaun
Donovan, a former Housing and Urban
Development secretary during the Obama
administration who is exploring a run for
mayor. “They’re open to new ways of seeing
their communities and their city, and they’re
looking to be united. As devastating as these
crises have been, they are an opportunity to
reimagine New York.”
The pandemic has magnified every weak-
ness and afterthought, every iota ofneglect.
With a shrunken budget and a tax base in
flux, the city can’t spend its way to prosper-
ity. But it also can’t afford self-destructive
austerity, not if it wants to live up toits aspi-
rations of greater equity. Everyone hates that
trash is piled on the sidewalk, but wheel-
chair users are the ones who can’t get past.
When crime rises, communities of color feel
it first. When the subway doesn’t work, those
with the most grueling commutes suffer
most. When parks fill with rats, playgrounds
rust, libraries close, and roads clog, when
supermarkets disappear, when jobs vanish
and housing construction stalls,already
hard lives become unbearable. Only the
wealthy can insulate themselves.
“The pandemic has made us realize how
interconnected we all really are,” says Jessica
Katz, executive director of the Citizens
Housing and Planning Council. “It’s not just
my health care and housing that keep me
and my family safe; it’s your health care and
housing that keep my family safe.” Also your
schools, your commute, your streets, and
even the air you breathe. The post-covid
recovery, twinned with an almost com-
pletely new city government, has the power
to alter nearly all aspects of the city, includ-
ing home, work, and the trips in between.Home
new york doesn’t have enough
housing. (Except in one category: We’ve
got an oversupply of gajillion-dollar
cloud palaces.) The constant thrum of
skyline-altering construction created the
impression that the 2010s were a decade of
manic condo building, but the city has
added new places to live at the same steady
and modest pace for 30 years, never keep-
ing up with the growing population or the
explosion in the number of jobs. There are
those who think that’s fine: New York is
crowded enough; don’t build and they
won’t come. And yet they do, packing a
family of four into a closet-size room if that’s
what it takes. The coronavirus refreshed a