Mamdani's election

New York City’s election of Zohran Mamdani — a 34-year-old community organizer born in Uganda to Indian parents — symbolizes many things. He is the first Muslim, the first South Asian and the youngest mayor in the city’s modern history. He is also a democratic socialist in the world’s capital of capitalism. While each of these identities marks a milestone, the deeper story lies in what his victory represents: a new model of urban politics that redefines what a great city should value and whom it should serve. It is also a vision that other megacities, including Seoul, may also pursue.

New York — my adopted home for the past two decades — has long celebrated its economic dynamism while quietly tolerating some of the deepest inequality in the developed world. Housing costs have soared beyond reach, public transit has eroded and younger generations have grown disillusioned with politics that seem to serve landlords and financiers more than residents. There are many reasons Mamdani won, but the central one is that his campaign transformed widespread frustration into a coherent civic vision.

He ran not on managerial competence or business-friendly growth, but on human-centered affordability: fare-free city buses, city-owned grocery stores, large-scale public housing and higher taxes on the wealthy. To the political establishment, this sounded radical. But to millions of renters, immigrants and working families — the true majority of New York City — it sounded right.

Mamdani’s victory signals the rise of what some scholars call progressive urbanism — a movement that treats cities not as marketplaces but as communities. It envisions a more equitable and democratic city grounded in social justice, participation and sustainable development. In recent years, similar currents have emerged in cities such as Barcelona and Bogotá, where leaders rose from activist networks rather than party machines and practiced a non-hierarchical, problem-solving politics.

Whether this trend can endure and whether Mamdani can succeed remains uncertain. Implementing his ambitious housing and transit agenda will demand immense resources and political coordination. In a world tilting toward conservatism, he will face fierce pushback from entrenched interests. Even if his policies meet resistance, however, the symbolic impact is already profound: Ordinary people are talking again about what a fairer city might look like. For many, that conversation alone is a form of empowerment.

The meaning of Mamdani’s win reaches well beyond New York. Around the world, cities face parallel crises: skyrocketing rents, shrinking youth opportunities and a growing sense that urban life no longer rewards those who sustain it. Seoul, the city where I was born, shares New York’s paradox in being a high-tech, globally appreciated metropolis that has become a pressure cooker of inequality. Young Koreans speak of “hell Joseon” as real estate prices rise faster than hope, and housing speculation distorts nearly every aspect of life.

What would it mean for Seoul to test its own version of progressive urbanism? Mamdani’s election offers a thought experiment for Korean policymakers and civic movements alike, positing that generational frustration, if organized, can become democratic energy. His campaign was not built in elite boardrooms but in neighborhood meetings, digital forums and coalitions among renters, working families and immigrants — the same spaces where Seoul’s civic imagination resides today, though fragmented and politically weak.

New York and Seoul are separated by oceans but united by the same question: Can democracy still deliver dignity where it matters most — in our homes, streets and neighborhoods? If Mamdani’s New York becomes even modestly more affordable and humane, it will show that empathy and equity are not luxuries but governing principles. Seoul, too, can learn from that experiment and remind the world that a truly great city is measured not by its skyline but by how well it shelters its people. If that happens, I will be deeply grateful to have lived in both cities — two places striving, in their own ways, to make urban life a little more just and a little more human.

Min Seong-jae (smin@pace.edu) is a professor of communication and media studies at Pace University in New York.