Mayor-elect’s campaign revealed deep appetite for civic engagement that his administration must now transform into lasting infrastructure
From Campaign Energy to Civic Infrastructure
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s campaign didn’t just win votes–it revived something largely absent from modern politics: genuine civic life. Across 5,700 canvassing shifts in 243 neighborhoods, over 100,000 volunteers knocked 3.1 million doors, made 4.5 million calls, and sent 2.7 million texts. The scale was unprecedented, but more remarkable was the spirit: neighbors talking to neighbors about shared challenges, building trust through face-to-face conversation rather than digital advertisements.
Writing for The Nation, analysts examining Mamdani’s civic organizing model argue that his administration faces a critical challenge: transforming campaign energy into permanent civic infrastructure. The question isn’t whether New Yorkers want to participate in public life–the campaign proved they do–but whether City Hall can sustain that engagement beyond election cycles.
The Affordability Crisis’s Civic Toll
Mamdani masterfully articulated how the affordability crisis permeates every aspect of New York life: rent consumes paychecks, transit costs climb as service degrades, grocery prices surge, childcare expenses make family-raising prohibitive. His remedies–rent freezes, universal childcare, fast and free buses–addressed material needs. But the campaign gave less attention to affordability’s civic toll.
“Having a social life requires disposable income,” The Nation article notes. “Spending time with friends or finding romance means spending money on drinks, dinner, or entry fees. Public life increasingly takes place in commercial spaces.” When people must pay $6 for coffee to have somewhere to work or $18 for lunch to escape the cold, civic participation becomes a luxury only the affluent can afford.
The affordability crisis doesn’t just push longtime residents out of homes–it pulls neighbors apart. “Even the most cohesive societies would strain under such conditions,” the analysis observes, “but ours is hypnotically distracted, our attention captured by screens that draw us away from the real world. The result is an epidemic of loneliness and disengagement.”
Meanwhile, President Trump’s administration threatens civil society foundations through ICE raids targeting immigrant communities, restrictions on press freedom and assembly rights, and attacks on universities and nonprofits. “These assaults stoke fear and discourage participation in public life,” creating a chilling effect on democratic engagement precisely when it’s most needed.
Adams’ Mixed Legacy on Public Space
Mayor Eric Adams showed attentiveness to public space that provides lessons for his successor. He appointed a “public realm czar” and established the Office of the Public Realm to coordinate the city’s approach to streets, parks, sidewalks, and plazas. The office’s 2023 Public Realm Plan outlined goals including expanding public restrooms and accelerating new public space delivery.
Adams also consolidated public-facing bureaus under the Office of Civic Engagement, bringing together Community Affairs, Public Engagement, NYC Service, and the Civic Engagement Commission. Yet his budgets repeatedly targeted institutions sustaining civic life: libraries, arts organizations, and nonprofits. The City Council successfully fought to restore $53 million to cultural organizations in the FY2025 budget, emblematic of tension between civic rhetoric and fiscal priorities.
Three Fronts for Civic Renewal
The Nation article proposes Mamdani focus on three areas: strengthening neighborhood ties, renewing civic infrastructure, and deepening participation.
Strengthening Neighborhood Ties
“People are more likely to put down their phones and step into public life when the invitation comes from down the block,” the analysis notes. Each community board should receive dedicated funds for hyper-local events–block parties, activity fairs, holiday gatherings, or potlucks like Chelsea’s annual long-table dinner.
Funding should be accessible to resident groups, local nonprofits, and commercial establishments willing to briefly close for community gatherings. The model builds on NYC Service’s Love Your Block program, which provides microgrants for beautification projects. Community builder Sam Pressler argues for extending this to all gathering types with minimal bureaucracy: “Giving residents micro grants for neighborhood gatherings is really easy to do. When you design for simplicity, create enough structure to give people direction without restriction, and entrust neighbors to creatively gather their neighbors, good things will happen.”
A New Resident Liaison within the Office of Public Engagement could coordinate welcoming newcomers, connecting them with local guides, community boards, and resources. This would help transform New York’s constant population churn into belonging rather than alienation.
Renewing Civic Infrastructure
Each era of crisis has spurred civic infrastructure innovation. Turn-of-the-century public baths addressed hygiene in overcrowded tenements. Fiorello LaGuardia’s 1930s municipal markets like Essex Street Market modernized food access. Open Streets and outdoor dining accelerated pedestrianization during COVID-19.
Today’s scarcity isn’t just outdoor space but public, flexible indoor spaces–places to gather, work, meet, and rest without paying. Philadelphia’s Bok Building transformed a former high school into studios, offices, shops, and community workspaces. Marseille’s La Friche converted a tobacco factory into a vast cultural campus mixing art, recreation, and daily life.
New York has poured billions into privatized developments like the Tin Building and Chelsea Market–“beautifully designed but functionally exclusive, upscale food halls that remain inaccessible to many, even most Manhattanites.” The city needs interior complements to open streets: shared, affordable, public indoor spaces extending civic life year-round.
Remote and freelance workers spend money just to have somewhere to work–$6 coffees, $18 lunches, even in outer boroughs. Civic groups without permanent homes pay exorbitant rental fees. In winter, New Yorkers shuffle from heated room to heated room, spending money to stay warm and have somewhere to go.
Why not repurpose unused real estate–vacant offices, empty public facilities–into “palaces for the people,” as sociologist Eric Klinenberg terms them? Reopening the underused lower level of Essex Market or converting vacant municipal buildings into civic commons would provide spaces where anyone can work, meet, and belong. Libraries serve this purpose partially, but their hours are limited and spaces aren’t designed for the range of social and creative needs today’s New Yorkers have.
The Office of the Public Realm has committed to expanding civic infrastructure through more public restrooms, open streets, and skateparks. Space to play remains core–adapting public pools to serve communities beyond ten summer weeks, expanding one of the few public places where New Yorkers reliably mix across age, race, and income.
Sports deserve strategic attention. Why not appoint a “basketball czar” to nurture New York’s first sport? Mamdani should tap his soccer fandom to accelerate soccer field development ahead of next year’s World Cup, and have the Parks Department sponsor free public tournaments in soccer, basketball, running, and more–echoing his campaign’s Cost of Living Classic soccer tournament that drew players from every borough.
Deepening Participation
The city’s citizen participation apparatus stretches from century-old community boards to participatory budgeting, but many on-ramps are hard to find or poorly explained. The People’s Money program convenes randomly selected, demographically representative residents in each borough to review public-submitted ideas and determine which proposals advance to participatory budgeting ballots. New Yorkers aged 11 and up then vote online or at pop-ups, with highest-scoring projects receiving funding.
It’s a quiet experiment in deliberative democracy worth expanding. The Mamdani administration could give borough presidents resources to host similar assemblies year-round on questions beyond budgeting: housing, climate resilience, public safety, neighborhood planning. Citizens could decide AI’s role in public schools or city services, deepening popular legitimacy for decisions. These assemblies would make civic engagement routine rather than exceptional.
NYC Service, the city’s volunteer clearinghouse, could evolve into a user-friendly civic directory–a single searchable hub like Philadelphia’s citizen-led Join Philly project mapping community organizations, mutual aid groups, and local associations. A companion “civic census” could catalog associational life density by neighborhood, helping policymakers identify where civic infrastructure is thin and resources most needed.
Digital Engagement Done Right
Mamdani’s campaign masterfully turned online attention into political action using creative digital tools to link policy agenda with real-world participation. As mayor, he shouldn’t abandon direct-to-constituent communication. City agencies should adopt conversational-style communication across platforms, using clear, engaging media to share updates, promote services, and guide New Yorkers through bureaucracy.
This approach makes government accessible and empowers citizens to take advantage of services–especially important as the city rolls out universal childcare, builds the Department of Community Safety, and asks residents to participate more actively in shaping their city.
Mamdani could move beyond one-way broadcast like Link NYC’s digital billboards toward mutual engagement. New York could experiment with a public social network where residents post announcements, discuss local issues, and exchange services. Government could share definitive program information; small businesses could advertise to neighbors. Vermont’s Front Porch Forum, a public benefit corporation operating 20 years, reaches nearly 90 percent of Vermont households. Vermonters used it to coordinate mutual aid during 2011 flooding and grocery deliveries during COVID-19.
From Campaign to Governance
At his primary campaign’s end, Mamdani walked Manhattan’s length, inviting New Yorkers to share streets with him. People jumped from seats, closed laptops, stopped bikes to join. “His campaign was a rehearsal for a different kind of city: joyful, solidaristic, and alive,” The Nation observes. “For a few hours at a time, volunteers stepped out of isolation and into a shared rhythm, rediscovering what it means to belong.”
That instinct to use politics not only to govern but to gather is precisely what New York needs as the nation lurches toward authoritarianism and the city strains under loneliness and distrust. The federal government will continue chilling speech, weakening press freedom, scattering assemblies, and using ICE to target immigrant communities. New York City can stand as counterexample by protecting and expanding conditions for participation in public life.
Mamdani’s agenda is built for this challenge. Policies like the Department of Community Safety, community-owned grocery stores, and strengthened sanctuary protections aim to make daily life livable. A coordinated civic program would complement this by lowering participation barriers, reclaiming shared spaces, and rebuilding trust between residents and government.
Revenue measures funding these programs–most notably taxing the rich–reinforce the social safety net keeping people anchored and able to participate in public life. Protecting civic life requires protecting material life; Mamdani’s platform recognizes the two are inseparable. The campaign proved New Yorkers’ appetite for civic engagement runs deep. Now comes the harder work: making that engagement permanent.
