In the February/March 2026 issue of Reason, we explore Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's policy goals and what they mean for New York City. Click here to read the other entries.
When I first took a road trip to New York as a young teen, I was astonished by the industrial landscape as we neared the city on the New Jersey Turnpike. "Why would they put all this dirty stuff so close to the city?" I asked my parents. As a D.C. kid, it had never occurred to me to think about what cities were actually for. In Washington, we mostly make rules and big marble monuments.
