The Tower of Babel in New York City

In the Book of Genesis, humanity gathers on a plain and resolves to build a tower reaching new heights. Brick by brick, the Tower of Babel rises as a monument of coordination, ambition, and the belief that growth itself is proof of success, with each new layer justifying the next. But as the structure stretches skyward, it grows more complex, more fragile, more disconnected from its foundation. Eventually, confusion sets in, the very scale that once symbolized strength becomes the source of dysfunction, and the project stalls under its own weight.

New York City increasingly feels like a modern Babel.

When I moved to the city for college in 2006, the municipal budget hovered around $50 billion. Nearly two decades later, despite a population that has barely grown and amid a significant financial shortfall, the new administration is proposing a budget exceeding $125 billion. Each year, a larger budget is treated as both inevitable and virtuous, far easier politically to raise than to reform. As the tower keeps rising, the foundations of institutional effectiveness, public trust, and affordability feel shakier than ever.

Yet, despite investing significant resources, New Yorkers are not seeing commensurate results. New York now spends over $40,000 per public school student, but fewer than half of our children read or do math at grade level. We allocate roughly $8 billion annually to the subway, yet many riders still feel unsafe and underserved. Median rents have more than tripled over the past two decades, while restrictive zoning and burdensome regulations make it extraordinarily difficult to build new housing. Electricity bills are rising to finance infrastructure investments that remain years behind schedule.

For younger, working-class professionals, especially, the math no longer works. There was once a time when a night out didn’t require a day’s wages and when you could pay your rent without mortgaging your future. Now, the cost of living continues to rise while the quality of life declines. Whether you are launching a career, starting a business, or building a family, starting something new in New York feels prohibitively expensive.

Mayor Mamdani made affordability the centerpiece of his campaign. He was right to do so. As mayor, he should continue to prioritize making the city more affordable for all. But now that he is in City Hall, he must add a new objective to his affordability agenda: accountability. Rather than proposing an ever-increasing budget like past administrations, the new mayor has an opportunity to take a hard look at how the city allocates its vast resources. His order to establish Chief Savings Officers in each agency is promising, but proposing property tax increases days later to fund an even larger budget risks reinforcing the pattern of spend first, evaluate later.

So how might the new administration advance both affordability and accountability? We know early childhood education yields significant dividends, so we should invest in high-quality preschool programs and build better schools. We know the areas of our economy with labor shortages, so let’s embrace an industrial policy for higher education and help train and reskill younger generations for the careers of the future. We know we can save money by investing in climate resilience and renewable energy, so let’s unleash a wave of retrofits, smart grids, battery storage, and the energy infrastructure needed to power data centers, artificial intelligence, and electric transportation. We know we need more housing, so let’s slash red tape and regulations and break ground on a new generation of sustainable and affordable homes and buildings. And we know we are pummeling towards a financial crisis with public funds, so let's be smarter now about finding government efficiencies while restoring trust and participation in civil society.

It would be unfair to lay decades of structural imbalance at the feet of a mayor only weeks into his administration. But moments of fiscal strain are precisely when leadership matters most. When the foundation shows cracks, you do not add more layers. 

If we continue to equate size with success, we risk repeating Babel’s mistake. New York does not need to build a taller tower. Instead, it needs to rebuild its base of public trust by rigorously evaluating which resources deliver results.