The Cheapest Fix for New York’s Decline

At a moment when Zohran Mamdani’s administration is consumed with budgets, ballooning costs, and competing priorities, New Yorkers are told that fixing the city will require more money, more programs, and more time. Those challenges are real. The city faces a multi-billion-dollar deficit, and the mayor has already advanced more than $23 billion in proposed new taxes in his first hundred days alone. But something simpler—and far more immediate—has been overlooked. New York has a civility problem. Spend even a few minutes on the subway, and the evidence is unavoidable. Riders cluster by the doors, refusing to move into open space. Backpacks stay on during rush hour, knocking into fellow passengers. Music laced with profanities blares from phones without headphones. People shove their way onto trains before others can exit. Entire cars fill unevenly, with one packed to the brim while another sits half-empty just a few steps away. None of this is new. But  it is worse . And  it is constant . Above ground, the pattern continues. Sidewalks become obstacle courses of distracted walkers. Basic courtesies—holding a door, yielding space, lowering one’s voice—feel increasingly rare. Public life, once defined by a shared understanding of how to coexist in close quarters, now feels frayed. These are not small irritations. They are the daily texture of city life. And when that texture becomes abrasive, the consequences compound. Commutes grow more stressful. Encounters become more adversarial. The city feels less like a shared enterprise and more like a competition for space and attention. What makes this decline particularly frustrating is how little it would cost to begin addressing it. New York does not need a billion-dollar initiative to remind people to take off their backpacks or to move down inside a subway car. It needs something far more basic: leadership willing to set expectations and reinforce them. In the past, public service campaigns—simple, direct, and often memorable—helped establish norms. “Courtesy counts” was not just a slogan; it was a civic expectation. Riders were reminded, in clear language, how to behave. And over time, those reminders shaped habits. Today, that kind of messaging is largely absent. In its place is a curious silence, as if asking people to be considerate of one another were somehow beyond the scope of public leadership. It is not. In fact, it may be one of the most important things leadership can do. Cities depend on informal norms as much as formal rules. No transit system, no police force, no regulatory regime can function smoothly if basic habits of consideration break down. The system assumes cooperation—people moving efficiently, respecting space, and recognizing that their behavior affects others. When those assumptions collapse, everything else becomes harder. Delays increase. Frustrations mount. Small conflicts escalate. The irony is that New Yorkers are entirely capable of better. One sees it in moments—after a storm, during a crisis, or even in the occasional rush-hour exchange when a rider steps aside, makes room, or offers a quiet apology. The city still knows how to function. What it lacks is not capacity, but expectation. That is where leadership matters. It is not the mayor’s job to teach basic decency, but it is his responsibility to insist on it—to set standards, reinforce norms, and make clear that how we move through shared space is not optional. A mayor who is serious about improving quality of life should not overlook the power of a sustained, visible campaign for civility: posters in subway cars, announcements on platforms, and social media messages that are clear, direct, and unapologetic. Even small acts of enforcement—reminding riders to remove backpacks or move down—can reinforce expectations. None of this requires new taxes or major appropriations. It requires attention, consistency, and a willingness to say something that ought to be obvious: How we treat one another matters. New York has always been a city of proximity. Millions of people sharing space, day after day, requires more than infrastructure. It requires habits of patience, awareness, and mutual respect. Those habits are not gone. But they are fading. And restoring them may be the cheapest, fastest way to make the city feel livable again. The post The Cheapest Fix for New York’s Decline appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .