New York City

See the Travel note New York. Hub for literary places in the city.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question - Where Did American Prosperity Go	Kyla Scanlon	setting	Visible, maintained infrastructure and a ‘how do we get to yes’ attitude.
Can Zohran Mamdani Really Freeze the Rent?	Rachel Holliday Smith	subject	Whether a mayor can freeze rents on a million stabilized apartments.

Source: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question - Where Did American Prosperity Go · Readwise highlight

Maybe that’s because it’s older, or because the architecture forces you to look up. History lives in the buildings here.

Role: setting
In the article: The longest stop of the trip, with a documentary, a commercial, the Aspen Ideas conference and an NPR debate. She contrasts New York’s attitude and its visible, maintained infrastructure with what she saw elsewhere.
Why it matters: It is the essay’s American counter-example to decline.

But does the mayor of New York City actually have the power to stop rent increases in one of the most expensive cities in the world?

Role: subject
In the article: A THE CITY explainer on the mayoral candidate’s promise to freeze rents on the roughly 996,600 rent-stabilized apartments: how the Rent Guidelines Board sets increases, how a mayor shapes it, and the freezes it granted under de Blasio.
Why it matters: The whole city is the subject; no single neighbourhood or building does work in the piece.