WATCH: Who are cities for?

We just spoke live with New York Times Magazine staff writer Jonathan Mahler — author of the forthcoming book The Gods of New York as well as the classic Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning — about Zohran Mamdani and how political change happens in New York City. Thank you to the nearly 900 people who joined us!

Mahler spoke about:

• How in the 1980s, New York split into two cities — one where some could get very rich, and another where many could no longer build stable lives

• How Donald Trump learned to capture public attention in the 1980s by manipulating the tabloids — and how he continues to apply those lessons today

• How Zohran Mamdani is offering a vision in which working-class New Yorkers can reject the city’s harshest realities and build something better

• The entrenched private sector interests that want to stop Mamdani and how real change will require a recalibration of the city’s power and economic structure

• The hollowness — and moral failure — of threats by billionaires to leave the city if faced with higher taxes

You won’t want to miss any of this one. Just click on the video player above to watch the entire conversation.

And look out for Jonathan Mahler’s new book, The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990, out August 12.

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