How Zohran Mamdani and a Cambridge scientist inspire us to reimagine our cities

Hope is a word Dr. Oni uses a lot. For her, effective urban governance rests largely on hope, which is distinct from optimism or any of its other usual synonyms. And in the current euphoria over Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral election, it’s easy to believe that.

It is true that most Indians who don’t know their local corporator, councillor or MLA have been rooting for Mamdani for weeks—an incredible irony about caring so deeply for city governance halfway across the planet while we breathe air laden with carbon monoxide or play hop-skip-jump to catch a metro ride.

As multiple opinion pieces tell us, Mamdani represents hope for New Yorkers—of more affordable living, inclusivity, progressive change and of a leader who will understand and listen to the people who voted for him.

He walked around, met communities and created a sense of buoyancy in a city that is both energizing and soul-sapping. According to one New York Times report, his community-centred campaign has even helped Gen Z voters—a screen-addicted generation that faces greater social alienation than any other—step out of home, discover the city and find new friends. It didn’t end at the block party; about 100,000 people under 35 years turned out to vote, going by early numbers.

In the weeks before the election, reacting to a radio host’s spiteful comments, Mamdani spoke about identity, Islamophobia and being Muslim in New York. His critics will keep taking potshots at him, but his election is a sign that people still believe, despite corruption, divisiveness and self-aggrandizement, that some politicians have the intention to rise above all that and actually work to improve their lives.

Or, as Dr. Oni put it during her talk in Bengaluru, “Hope needs institutions to support and shape it.” The city, comprising people from all corners of the country and overseas, is one of those institutions. No matter how much we try to decongest cities, they continue to draw people desiring social mobility and equity. “Progress will be driven by hope and cities are the canvas of that experiment,” says Dr. Oni, who uses the same term for urban infrastructure and health set-ups: ‘Hope infrastructure.’

It seems elementary when she explains it, but we miss or ignore the point all too often: If city planners and politicians had considered people’s health first and then made policy decisions, we’d have a healthier, more productive and happier populace. Instead, they make plans first and then expect people to somehow fit into these plans.

Her suggestion, based on a sustained long-term citizen-science programme with young people in Lagos, where she was born, is to get policymakers to see that the end point of growth is not prosperity, but social justice. For that, people need hope. Hope is often conflated with aspiration, but there’s a difference. “Hope is a more complex entity that comprises desire, belief in possibility of an outcome and the agency to shape that outcome,” she said.

In their new book, A Sixth of Humanity, Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian write, “Nations are constructs of the mind,” where its many citizens “maintain a sense of communion,” though they are never likely to meet every individual. It’s the same for cities.

We all strive together in the very megapolises that we often feel disconnected from. The anonymity of a city is our greatest strength to make of ourselves whatever we want, yet it can also be alienating. It is hope that keeps us going . Without ways for young people to meaningfully contribute and change their future, all plans for economic development will likely remain just frameworks for wishful thinking.

It’s easy to dismiss ideas like these as emotional, since they use words like ‘hope’ and ‘belief’—as, in fact, a male panellist did afterwards, saying that “recognizable measures and outcomes” and not feelings are what lead to economic development, even though Dr. Oni’s methods clearly incorporate frameworks and evidence. It’s just that in her model, social justice is not assumed to be an automatic outcome of economic growth.

What policymakers often don’t seem to understand is that cities and nations are made up of people, not just land and resources—you can’t but consider their feelings.

We need a new language for these recognizable measures and outcomes, a vocabulary that people who live in cities, walk on its pavements, feel its rhythms and vote in every election actually understand and relate to. People like Dr. Oni, who is in her early 40s, and Mamdani, 34, speak that language… people who make us believe that cities allow us to thrive.

The author is editor of Mint Lounge.