Dear Mayor Bill de Blasio:

Along with many other architects and urbanists, I'm looking forward to your taking office this month as mayor of New York City, and working to implement the theme of your campaign, the elimination of the increasingly radical disparities that underlie that “tale of two cities” you so frequently spoke about—a tale, increasingly, about two nations. While this program of social equity must operate in many spheres—from the creation of jobs to the provision of services, to the fight for environmental and social justice—planning the physical city in its growth and transformation is one of the most important powers of municipal government, one that the Bloomberg administration has deployed with stark effectiveness...

Mayor de Blasio, your idea of a mandate for inclusionary zoning begins to address this crisis yet continues to depend on the tender mercies of private developers to actually produce the units. If you are going to tax them, why not collect the money, municipalize the program, and make gorgeous, genuinely affordable housing your greatest legacy, building it where it's most needed? We can do it! In the parlous interwar years in Vienna, that little metropolis constructed apartments for almost a quarter-million working-class people, housing them in some of the finest architecture of all time. Why can't the greatest, richest city in the world do the same? Your massive electoral majority suggests that New York is ready for a restoration of democratic ideals about the role of government in directly bettering the lives of citizens. That's the kind of public-private partnership I could get behind!

-Michael Sorkin