New Yorkers Want Their City Back

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg polarized the U.S. metropolis. The new mayor, Bill de Blasio, wants to lead an era of social change.

Nearly three-quarters of New York voters voted for the new mayor, Bill de Blasio. This is not just a measure of his popularity. It is first and foremost a commentary on the extent to which New Yorkers desire to put their city, which has become less and less recognizable, on a different track. Michael Bloomberg, the outgoing mayor, is not only a white billionaire; he was mainly the mayor of the rich and white. Anyone who wants to know how an already extremely gentrified city looks needs only to drive to New York. Bloomberg and his people had only one focus: Wall Street and its community. There, investors and luxury developers had free reign.

The crowding out of the middle class, the social polarization and the exploding rent: all these interested the authoritarian mayor little. He let his police go after blacks and Latinos. Now de Blasio has a huge popular mandate to change all of this — a fundamental turning point in the long remodeling of New York into a glittering metropolis of the rich and powerful. His election ranks as a success of moderate and left-leaning candidates against tea party members in other parts of the country. This could be an encouraging sign for President Obama to push harder on his agenda for equality and justice, rather than hanging back.