Explore every episode of the podcast After Hours with Jamie Rubin: A Vital City Podcast

Andrew Rigie was five years old when he started rolling rugelach at his grandfather's Brooklyn bakery at 4:30 in the morning. Now he runs the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which represents an industry that employs more than a quarter-million people, pays more than $11 billion in wages and generates around $2.8 billion a year in sales tax revenue. In this episode of "After Hours with Jamie Rubin," Rigie explains why the handful of restaurants you can't get a table at is a misleading picture of the other 24,000, how Bloomberg's letter-grade rating system saw Health Department fines spike without a corresponding drop in foodborne illness — and how a $30 minimum wage threatens to turn a busy neighborhood restaurant's $100,000 profit into a $380,000 loss.

The Real Cost of a $30 Wage: The View From the Restaurant Industry

In the summer of 2022, families in New York City were waiting six hours in the heat to swim for one hour. Julie Sandorf, who ran the Charles Revson Foundation for nearly two decades, decided to find out why — and what she found was a lifeguard program that had been controlled by a single union official for nearly fifty years, accountable to no one, operating under certification requirements that exist nowhere else in the country, with exactly one test site in all of New York City. Jamie talks with Julie about how a Chicago after-school program from 2000 ended up being the model for fixing these problems and what it actually means to be a smart, catalytic private funder in a city government this complicated. 

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

New York might be next in a growing line of states adopting millionaire taxes — and the same old fear comes with it: tax the rich too hard and they'll leave, taking their businesses and their tax revenue with them. Cristobal Young, an economic sociologist at Cornell, has spent over twenty years testing that fear against actual IRS data, going back to New Jersey's first millionaire tax fight in 2004. His finding, consistently: millionaires barely move at all, and when they do, it's rarely for tax reasons. Jamie talks with Young about why a wealth tax on people like Elon Musk might be worth the administrative headache and why — twenty years in — the deepest driver of where people live still isn't the tax code.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

New York City just released its first-ever Urban Forest Plan — a legally mandated, decade-by-decade roadmap to get the city's tree canopy from 23% to 30% by 2040. Jamie talks with Adam Lubinsky, a partner at W X Y architecture + urban design, who helped build the plan from the ground up. They cover why preserving old trees matters as much as planting new ones, why the only property type where canopy has been shrinking is one- and two-family homes, and why one-third of the city's urban forest sits on private land that nobody's currently watching.

NYC Urban Forest Plan 2026

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

 

On this episode of After Hours, Jamie talks to Fred Naiden — Columbia grad, former TWU Local 100 motorman, Harvard PhD, and recently retired UNC classics professor — about his new book, Railroaded: A Motorman's Story of the New York City Subway. Recorded the day after the Long Island Rail Road went on strike and settled, Jamie and Fred discuss the 1980 subway strike, what it was really like to walk off the job, why working conditions mattered more than wages, and how the city's transit world has changed since the days of 15,000 subway crimes a year. Fred also offers a pointed assessment of Mayor Mamdani — through the lens of someone who learned organizing from a communist rent-strike leader known only as "The General." 

Railroaded: A Motorman’s Story of the New York City Subway
 

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

Joe McReynolds has two jobs. By day, he's a national security analyst tracking Chinese information warfare. Nights and weekends, he's a Tokyo obsessive with a PhD in progress, a private digital library of hundreds of Japanese-language urban studies books, and a story about the time he frantically called his boss to manufacture an emergency just so he could fly to Tokyo and show Ezra Klein around. Jamie sits down with McReynolds to talk about what New York could actually learn from a city where you can open a bar in your living room for $2,000, health inspections happen every five to seven years, and grandmas sell homemade lunchboxes off folding tables without anyone hassling them. Also: public toilets, the 1961 down-zoning that broke everything, and why Joe is terrified about the short term but quietly hopeful about geoengineering.

The Met Gala, the largest fundraiser in America, raises money for the Costume Institute at the Met Museum, which pays a dollar a year in rent. Tom Costello thinks we can do better. Jamie sits down with the theater director and co-founder of the Debt Gala — a genuinely joyful alternative happening the night before fashion's biggest party — to talk about medical debt, the miracle math of buying it for pennies on the dollar, and why $19,000 can quietly erase nearly $2 million in someone's financial nightmare. 

https://www.debtgala.com/

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

Freezing the rent sounds simple. Alex Armlovich, one of the sharpest housing policy minds in the country, explains why it isn't — and why that doesn't mean it's wrong. Jamie and Alex, a fellow at the Niskanen Center and program officer at Coefficient Giving, dig into what the Rent Guidelines Board actually does, what happens to buildings when operating costs outpace revenue, and what a "physical equity extractor" is — and why you don't want one buying your building.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

 

Jamie talks to Louisa Chafee, the head of the city's Independent Budget Office, about what it means when a mayor is honest about spending but bullish on income. The new administration delivered on its promise to provide fiscal transparency. But with a $6 billion gap projected for next year, growing to $11 billion by 2030, the question isn't just whether the math adds up. It's whether a property tax hike the City Council doesn't want and Wall Street revenues nobody can predict are really a plan. Along the way: class size mandates, nonprofit payment delays and public bathrooms.  

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

In the latest episode of After Hours with Jamie Rubin, Annemarie Gray of Open New York joins the podcast to discuss the growing momentum behind housing reform in New York. Fresh off a major victory in reforming the City Charter, Gray breaks down the push for State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) reform — a 50-year-old law originally designed to protect the environment that she argues is now being weaponized to block green, transit-oriented development. From the shifting political landscape under Mayor Zohran Mamdani to the "invisible" regulatory hurdles adding tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a single apartment, Gray explains why modernizing these rules is essential for an "all-of-the-above" approach to affordability.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

Molly Park spent 22 years as a New York City public servant — moving from the Independent Budget Office to HPD to the Department of Homeless Services, and finally to Commissioner of the Department of Social Services, one of the largest and most complex agencies in city government. She left on February 27th, 2026. In this exit interview, Jamie and Molly take stock of what DSS actually does (hint: it's a lot more than homelessness), what the federal assault on the social safety net means for millions of New Yorkers, and what it takes to manage a $16 billion agency serving 3 million people. She reflects on what she's proud of, what challenges lie ahead for the agency, and what she hopes to carry into whatever comes next.

https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/system-coordination-in-crisis-response-to-high-acuity-homelessness/

City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

Policymakers spend enormous energy debating what government should do. But who’s paying attention to whether it actually gets done? Gloria Gong runs Harvard’s Government Performance Lab, where she’s spent 11 years sending teams into more than 100 state and local agencies to work on that exact question. Gong explains why government defaults to process over outcomes, how a Detroit violence intervention program cracked the code on results-driven contracting, and why her lab mostly skips New York City — which she says has the best government talent bench in the country but makes a terrible model for everywhere else. She also tells the story of how her husband’s carefully maintained list of her passions saved her from a career in corporate law.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

On this episode of After Hours, Jamie sits down with two architects of that history: Elizabeth Glazer, former head of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and Renita Francois, former executive director of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP).Together, they dive into the legacy of Neighborhood Stat — a model that treated safety not just as a matter for the police, but as a joint project involving sanitation, parks, and, most importantly, the residents themselves. As the Mamdani administration begins its work, Glazer and Francois offer a roadmap for "putting the public back in public safety" and a cautionary tale about why the data that drives these decisions must never be allowed to go dormant.

https://map.cityofnewyork.us/neighborhood-stat/

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

Grand visions win elections, but functional governance is what keeps a city running. In this season premiere of "After Hours,"Jamie Rubin and Vital City founder Liz Glazer dig into a pragmatic to-do list for the new Mamdani administration: 11 tangible fixes for the first 100 days, the first installment of Vital City's new "Just Fix It" project. They discuss why unsexy improvements — like dismantling some of the city's 350 miles of scaffolding, turning on more outdoor lights to reduce crime, and clearing out the "spaghetti" of obsolete commissions — are critical to restoring New Yorkers’ faith in government. As Liz argues, there is no public policy without turning government gears that make it happen.

 

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

This week on After Hours, Jamie takes a detour from New York politics to explore a deeply personal piece of the city's basketball history: the life and legacy of Michael Ray Richardson, the electrifying Knicks guard whose career was derailed by cocaine addiction in the 1980s. Jamie sits down with writer Jake Uitti, who co-authored Richardson's autobiography Banned: How I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption, to discuss what made "Sugar Ray" such a distinctive talent and how Richardson found redemption after his lifetime ban from the league.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

Jamie and Leila Bozorg, Executive Director For Housing and Secretary of the Charter Review Commission, analyze the ballot measure results: what it all means for building new housing stock in New York, why New Yorkers voted against "number six," and how these ballot measures will help Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani fulfill his affordable housing dreams.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

As we gear up for the mayoral election, Bill Lipton, the former Lead Organizer and Organizing Director of The Working Families Party, shares how the party in its early days defied the status quo, how he and his team learned to make effective change by working across party lines and how politicians at every level of government -- even the new mayor -- can prioritize affordability AND climate politics in the coming year.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

In 2019 the storied violence at Riker's Island was on its way to being a thing of the past. Fast forward to today: not only is the jail still in full swing, but the violence, mismanagement and deaths at Rikers are perhaps worse than ever. The mayoral election is just two weeks away, and both Cuomo and Mamdani have shared their vision for the future of Rikers. Jamie talks to Liz Glazer, founder of Vital City, justice advisor under Mayor Bill DeBlasio and former federal prosecutor, to understand how we got here and what the Riker's might look like under a new administration.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

This year's mayoral election has the potential to fix the housing crisis in New York City. Of course, there are the candidates themselves, but more importantly, there are the ballot questions. Four out of the six questions, which were carefully written by The Charter Revision Commission,  aim to make housing more affordable and accessible throughout the entire city. Jamie sits down with Leila Bozorg, Secretary of the Commission and Executive Director of Housing for the Mayor's Office, to dissect these questions and help listeners decide how to vote.

 

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

For the past few weeks, rumors have surrounded Mayor Eric Adams and his potential resignation. Is he going to leave office early? Will he work for the Trump administration? Can his voter base really keep Mamdani from becoming the mayor of New York? Jamie and award-winning journalist and Executive Director of Citizens Union Grace Rauh pick apart these rumors and examine what this race says about the state of democracy in NYC. 

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

Almost everyone agrees that New York City needs more housing — and that building housing here takes too long and costs too much. New York Magazine architecture critic Justin Davidson wants to remind us that one thing we shouldn't cut corners on is good design. Jamie and Justin talk about what architects really mean when they say “design,” and how good design and abundant housing are closely related.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

As debates rage on over how to make housing production cheaper, Cara Eckholm — formerly of Sidewalk Labs, modular growth company Nabr, and Cornell Tech — has her eyes on modular. Cara, who now runs the urban consultancy Eckholm Studios, sits down with Jamie to discuss what New York should do to — and what pitfalls we should avoid — to build good homes faster.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

In this episode, Jamie reflects on Trump’s Reconciliation Package – a.k.a. the “Big Beautiful Bill” – and, drawing on his expertise in climate policy and investment, predicts how the bill could pit the clean energy industry against America’s poor and working-class citizens.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at 

https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

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You couldn't have missed it — on Tuesday, June 25, state assembly member Zohran Mamdani won the New York primary, beating favored contender and former governor Andrew Cuomo by 12 points. Everyone and their mother has an explanation for what happened and what a Mamdani mayoral administration would look like. But none have quite the perspective of Bradley Tusk, political strategist and founder of Tusk Strategies. Prior to his current role, Bradley served as deputy governor of Illinois, campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg, and communications director for Chuck Schumer. Jamie and Bradley sit down to recap the race and share why they think Zohran Mamdani could succeed as mayor.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

A lot goes wrong in New York, and as New York City deputy mayor for operations from 2021-2025, Meera Joshi was responsible for fixing much of it. During her tenure during the Adams administration, Meera led nine agencies that cover all facets of New York City life — from trash to street cleaning to buildings. In this episode, she and Jamie go under the hood of what it looks like to manage an operation of 100,000+ city employees and what lessons she'll take with her to her next role.
 

 For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

Harvard economist Ed Glaeser and Yale Law School state and local government law professor David Schleicher don’t always agree when it comes to New York politics, but on this mayoral election they do: among the 11 candidates in the crowded field, they insist, most aren’t saying much of anything. Jamie, Ed and David run down this cycle’s policy platforms — the most overplayed, the worst, and, somewhere in the mix, the ones that might just have a shot at doing a lot of good for New York City.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

 

Why don't more businesspeople run for mayor of America's biggest city? Host Jamie Rubin and political commentator Ross Barkan discuss who's not on the ballot in the 2025 mayoral race and why. They analyze Mike Bloomberg's formula for political and managerial success while dissecting former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's comeback attempt. In a thought experiment, they game out exactly how a wealthy outsider might spend $100 million to capture City Hall in a wide-open race. And Barkan delivers a brutal assessment: The current mayor, he estimates, has a 5% chance of survival in what may be the most consequential election in decades.

City Council candidate Maya Kornberg, running in a district that's been represented by Bill de Blasio, Brad Lander and now Shahana Hanif, discusses her race — and what she thinks connects it to larger local and national trends. She argues that many constituents feel unheard — a problem she says she would address through mobile district offices and continuous engagement. She also argues that today's divisive political climate, while troubling, isn't unprecedented for American democracy.

Housing advocate and Open New York Executive Director Annemarie Gray argues that scarcity drives New York's housing crisis, and she and Jamie discuss how to make more building possible. Among the solutions Annemarie identifies are streamlining the land use review process (ULURP), upzoning neighborhoods, and leveraging partners in state government to put pressure on New York City. 

Annemarie advocates for balancing tenant protections with increased supply and discusses her organization's push for the Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act, which would allow religious organizations to build affordable housing on their underutilized properties.
 

Mentioned:

Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act (S3397 / A3647)

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at 

https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

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Nonprofit legal expert Sean Delany discusses unprecedented agreements between the Trump administration and major law firms, some of whom are pledging upwards of $100 million in pro bono services for administration-selected causes. Sean and Jamie discuss how these arrangements could divert critical legal resources for nonprofits that traditionally benefit from pro bono aid, and have a broader chilling effect the legal industry.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

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A revealing conversation about power, politics and the future of New York City with Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. We dive deep into his campaign for city comptroller — an office responsible for managing $280 billion in pension funds, overseeing city contracts and providing crucial checks on mayoral power — and his vision for leveraging the office's substantial powers to tackle New York's affordability crisis. With Manhattan rents rising to an average of $5,300 monthly and vacancy rates at historic lows, Mark shares his strategy to finance desperately needed affordable housing through pension fund investments. Plus, he makes the case for universal childcare as a $2 billion investment that could transform family economics across the five boroughs.

 

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

In this podcast episode, American urban revitalization strategist Majora Carter critically examines the "nonprofit industrial complex", arguing that many social service organizations perpetuate systemic problems rather than solving them. She highlights how current nonprofit models often trap communities in poverty, using ineffective top-down approaches that prioritize maintaining the organization over creating meaningful change. Drawing from personal experience and broader research, she challenges listeners to reconsider how philanthropic efforts address social issues, advocating for more peer-based, community-driven interventions that genuinely empower marginalized populations.

 

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

While many of New York’s essential services are run through nonprofit contracts, 90% of City payments to those nonprofits were late last year. In response, many nonprofits are on the brink of closing their doors. There’s a structural problem: it’s hard to build unified nonprofit power because many nonprofits are small and can be quite different from each other. John MacIntosh has a solution — actually, several. As managing partner of SeaChange Capital Partners, he leads a team that provides a suite of affordable services to nonprofits, including business advisory and bespoke financing for the sector. On this episode of After Hours, Jamie and John talk about the work he is doing now to support nonprofits, and what the City and private players can do to support this sector that supports so many New Yorkers.


“Winter is Coming,” John MacIntosh, Vital City
For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.

Jamie started his career in state government as the head of the New York State Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery, where he led the response to Hurricane Sandy. Only one episode in to After Hours, there is news big enough to warrant a break from usual programming. The Trump Administration has threatened to make major cuts from disaster recovery funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This grant comes in as FEMA is leaving and is responsible for making sure that communities can rebuild after crisis. 

Jamie shares his experience after Sandy and how damaging these cuts could be across the country.

Mentioned:

"Trump Team Plans Deep Cuts at Office That Funds Recovery From Big Disasters," Christopher Flavelle, The New York Times

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at 

https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

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Government procurement makes up 15% of global GDP. Despite its impact on almost every facet of how people live in cities, it is rarely a topic of research — the data is hard to access and the bureaucratic structures can be opaque. But Ed Glaeser thinks it is time we talk about it. 

 In New York City, procurement dollars often go to waste in inefficient funding processes. Why do we waste so many resources on procurement? (And why is the Second Avenue Subway still unfinished and over budget?) In part, Ed argues, it is because we New York is so afraid of corruption that we are hamstringing our own procedures.

Ed, a Harvard economist, joins me to explain how this happened, what other cities we can learn from, and how we can improve in this episode of After Hours.

Mentioned:

“Transit Costs Project,” NYU Marron Institute

“Public Procurement in Law and Practice,” by Erica Bosio, Simeon Djankov, Edward Glaeser, and Andrei Shleifer.

For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/.