After Hours with Jamie Rubin: A Vital City Podcast

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 m...

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'...

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 advoca...

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 chill...

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'...

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...

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 — actu...

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...

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 r...