Under this regime, though, New York City is regressing. On any life-safety metric, from homicides to fire deaths, and on any measure of prosperity or well-being, from population to job growth, Gotham is stagnant or sliding backward. A walk around town reveals no enlightened, well-funded urban oasis but something more like a twenty-first-century version of Frank Capra’s dystopian Pottersville, with neon cannabis-for-sale signs blinking on storefronts, addicts nodding off on sidewalks, and street vendors selling stolen toiletries, even as drugstores lock up merchandise to deter shoplifters.

Contrast this dismal vista with the original progressivism of a century or so ago: that of Theodore Roosevelt and Al Smith, of new building codes and workplace-safety laws, of settlement houses and citizenship education. That movement helped build a wealthier, safer, and happier New York. Its modern version is making us poorer, more endangered, and miserable. The old and new progressivisms share a belief in the power of government to make urban life better—but that’s where the similarity ends.