Opinion | Escape From Zohran Mamdani’s New York

Arnold Toynbee’s “Cities on the Move” (1970) documents the history of big cities around the world becoming impoverished and insolvent—some never to recover. Many of the patterns he describes apply to New York now.

Real estate contributed roughly $35 billion of the $80 billion in city tax receipts in fiscal 2025, and personal taxes another $18 billion. The financial sector, real estate, construction, tourism and retail trade sectors are the major contributors to these revenues.