I’m Running for THIN CITY MAYOR

I’m impressed by New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. New York is an extraordinarily complicated place to govern. But it is also a thick city—dense with people, infrastructure, transit, institutions, talent, and possibility.

Most of America is different.

We live in thin city: spread out, car-dependent, expensive to serve, and increasingly difficult to navigate without owning and operating a two-ton machine. (The average resident of NYC has around ½ the carbon footprint that someone in thin city has :(

Free buses and childcare may help thick cities. They won’t fix thin city.

So I’m running for THIN CITY MAYOR :)

It’s an imaginary office. But the problems are real.

My model is Jaime Lerner, the architect and urban planner who became mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, in 1971. Instead of waiting for enormous budgets or perfect political conditions, Lerner used DESIGN. Curitiba’s Bus Rapid Transit system became one of the world’s great transportation innovations and helped inspire BRT systems across Latin America and beyond.

That is the kind of politics I’m interested in.

See the problem. Design something better. Build it. Learn. Repeat.

Thin city needs new mobility systems, new kinds of streets, new vehicles, new housing patterns, and new ways to connect people to everyday life.

Not ideology first.

Design first.

Politics asks us which side we’re on.

Design asks: What could work better?

That’s why I’m running for THIN CITY MAYOR.

No election required.

Just better ideas—and the willingness to try them.