The Mamdani Administration Must Treat Data as Infrastructure for a Community-First City

By Jamil Ellis, Wil Jones, Zoe Voss Lee, and Todd Whitney

Data is political power. Trump’s takedown of thousands of datasets earlier this year made it clear that top-down information ecosystems enable those in power to give or revoke access to evidence crucial for visualizing systemic inequities. Today, data is also a source of economic power. It is the feedstock of Large Language Models created by companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI who rely on extractive data scraping practices as the basis of their business models. Climate data is becoming a particularly desirable commodity for companies deploying projects in the spirit of neighborhood betterment, only to leave those communities behind when projects are no longer worth the investment. Now is the time to reinvest in efforts that support community visions for an affordable, resilient, and livable city–starting with giving power back to communities through data.

The excitement surrounding Zohran’s election has resonated globally, but the impacts of this election will be felt longest by New Yorkers. That’s why we are writing as New Yorkers on our vision for a community-first livable city. With the historic election of Zohran Mamdani, New York City now has the opportunity to ask: What does a people’s data infrastructure look like? How can NYC lead the way in treating data like infrastructure that redistributes both the political and economic power of data back to New Yorkers?

In many ways, the ballot propositions from this month’s election serve as indicators of how the City is already thinking about the need for improved information infrastructure. On November 4, Assemblymember Mamdani joined the majority of New Yorkers in voting “yes” on Propositions 3 and 5—two measures that create an opening for the next administration to embed environmental justice at the center of how New York plans, invests, and prepares for climate risk. Proposition 5 modernizes the administration of the City Map by centralizing and digitizing it, increasing the efficiency of government operations and accelerating the approval of public and private projects that reshape the public realm. Proposition 3 complements this by establishing an Expedited Urban Land Use Review Procedure (ELURP) for smaller projects, including those that strengthen climate resilience.

Data is the critical infrastructure that underpins these reforms. It guides investment priorities and ensures procedural justice within faster review processes. By extending the same modernization approach to environmental justice data infrastructure, the next administration can ensure that environmental justice is at the center of how New York plans, invests, and prepares for climate risk.

Luckily, the foundations for environmental justice data infrastructure already exist. In 2024, the Mayor’s Office published the EJNYC Report and Mapping Tool–a first-of-its-kind effort informed by decades of frontline advocacy. Tools like this are important, but so are on-the-ground data collection efforts led by community-based organizations. For example, community based organizations like South Bronx Unite are working to address poor air quality by launching an air quality monitoring project that leverages a network of 65 air monitors to track particle pollution and gasses that cause asthma, heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases. In Northern Manhattan, WE ACT’s Community Air Monitoring Project (CAMP) has installed 18 high-quality air monitors on schools, collecting real-time data on seven EPA criteria Pollutants.

In recent years, Red Hook residents bearing the brunt of Amazon last-mile warehouses began monitoring traffic, air, and noise pollution from the influx of delivery vehicles on neighborhood streets. Their community data collection efforts are clarifying Red Hook residents’ intuitions about the imprint of delivery warehouses on the neighborhood, and are the source of current lobbying efforts for more stringent emissions standards for delivery vehicles. Better data on rainfall even has the potential to support innovative insurance products that result in faster payouts to affected households. Right now as extreme rain threatens the livelihood of everyday New Yorkers, innovative approaches like FloodNet’s network of real-time flood monitoring sensors provided data for Community Based Catastrophe Insurance products, like NYC’s 2023 parametric flood insurance pilot program.

The forthcoming EJNYC Plan represents a continuation of this 2024 report and mapping tool, and creates an opportunity for operationalizing further investment into EJ data, particularly, data created and stewarded by community based organizations. Oftentimes, these community-led efforts to create neighborhood data are borne out of a recognition that the city has not invested enough in the capacity to collect and leverage data of this scale, particularly in neighborhoods that have experienced historic disinvestment and bear a disproportionate burden of air pollution and climate impacts like heat.

That burden results in health costs from asthma and heat related complications with an outsized impact on frontline communities, further threatening the affordability of our city for working class New Yorkers.

Zohran campaigned on a platform that recognizes that climate issues and quality of life issues are inseparable. To realize a city that is livable, where residents can afford to weather the next historic flood event, or pay for air conditioning in increasingly hot summers, communities need data and the tools to use that data. With the rapid growth of AI fueled by data, communities need equitable access to technology infrastructure. We need Community AI, where community governance and technology and data infrastructure flips the current model being pushed by the big tech companies on its head. It puts transparency back into processes and puts humans back in the loop for systemic change. NYC should not just be the leader in AI, it should be the leader in AI built for the people, fueled by equitable data, creating jobs, focused on making life affordable for everyone.

We believe the Mamdani Administration can make this vision a reality by:

1. Creating an executive level budget for Climate Justice, starting with a Community Environmental Data Fund.

Establish a dedicated, recurring budget line to sustain neighborhood-scale air, heat, and flood monitoring led by local organizations. This fund should protect existing community data infrastructure once supported by federal grants and expand it through peer-to-peer partnerships that share knowledge and capacity across neighborhoods. This should be managed by a Community Environmental Data and AI Czar with the mandate to ensure this fund’s efforts are coordinated across city agencies.

2. Institutionalizing Community in City Data Decision Making

Propositions 3 and 5 offer the chance to build not only faster systems, but fairer ones. Drawing from models like Denver’s Love My Air program, the City can provide resources, training, and technical guidance to help community organizations generate high-quality environmental data that meets City standards. Establishing clear interoperability protocols would ensure that community data is credible, comparable, and actionable—enabling local insights to shape capital planning, resilience investments, and public health interventions.

3. Appointing a Community Environmental Data & AI Steward

Create a senior role (with supporting staff) within OTI or DEP to coordinate neighborhood data programs, strengthen community capacity, and safeguard residents against surveillance or misuse. This office would set governance standards and facilitate partnerships among City agencies, universities, and community organizations to ensure that emerging data and AI tools advance equity and environmental justice, not exploitation.

Our city has long been grounds for innovations in collective power building. From cooperative housing, to participatory budgeting and Pre-K For All, New Yorkers have led bold movements towards equitable infrastructure and processes that set a new standard for cities globally. The intensifying impacts of the climate crisis on communities of color in NYC and around the world require new infrastructures that stretch the limits of imagination for how cities can shift power to communities.

As the world continues to adapt to a warming climate, data will inform new climate adaptation strategies, community driven AI will be instrumental in equitable outcomes, and NYC must be the leader in community-first climate solutions.

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