Hello again, and thank you for reading Fast Companys Plugged In.
In 2013, David Min came to Disney CEO Bob Iger with a big idea. Min, a founding partner at Disneys investment arm, Steamboat Ventures, was now head of innovation for the entire company. He had concluded that something fundamental needed to be done about Disneys relationship with the tech industry.
Wemeaning The Walt Disney Companydidn’t really have a very good reputation at the time for working with startups, he remembers. Tech accelerators such as Y Combinator, 500 Startups, and Techstars were changing how high-potential concepts got their shot at becoming thriving businesses. Min thought Disney might learn something by investing in such an accelerator.
Igers take: That idea wasnt big enough. His response to me was like, Why would we do that?we should just do it ourselves, remembers Min.
So Disney did. The entertainment and media behemoth launched its own accelerator, partnered with Techstars to get it rolling, and gave it the most logical possible name: Disney Accelerator. In 2014, it unveiled its first cohort of 11 startups.
Eleven years later, corporate accelerators within large companies are no longer such a daring notion. Actually, theyre quite common. But Disneys take on the idea has had time to grow well beyond its origin as an exercise in reputational repair.
On Wednesday, Disney Accelerator held its 2025 demo day on the Disney studio lot. The event served to introduce this years cohort of four startups: animation studio Animaj, microdrama producer DramaBox, 3D printer Haddy, and 3D projection company Liminal Space.
Bonnie Rosen and David Min [Photo: Courtesy of Disney]
The Disney employees who gathered at the studios Main Theater to watch a video presentation about this years cohort and then mingle with this years startups and alumni companies in person came from across the companys myriad enterprises, including movies, broadcasting, theme parks, cruise ships, consumer products, and beyond. They represented a fraction of the almost 600 staffers who now engage with the accelerator program year-round.
We had people all the way from facilities and maintenance to the chairman of that division coming in for this one particular company, says Disney Accelerator general manager Bonnie Rosen, whose résumé includes time at Techstars as well as a startup that was part of Disneys 2015 cohort. Those types of vertical conversations happen within each division.
More than any other long-lived Hollywood titan, Disney prides itself on being innovative to its core. Its an understandable badge of honor given that Walt Disney himself embraced advances such as the talkies, Technicolor, and TV as they came along, making each fundamental to the way his namesake company entertained the world. Today, its usually no mystery why Disney was intrigued by any given company among the 60-plus that have been through its accelerator program.
At demo day, for example, Liminal Space showed off its technology in the studios Stage One building, where the original Mouseketeers filmed The Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s. It projects particularly crisp, vivid 3D video that can be viewed using simple polarized glasses. It can also be interactive: One of the demos involved The Guardians of the Galaxys Rocket Raccoon bantering with attendees. Liminals system isnt currently in use at Disneys parks, but it seems like a natural.
Liminal Space’s 3D projection technology is far more impressive in person than in a flat image like this. [Photo: Harry McCracken]
As for Animaj, its what Disney itself was in the beginning: a small but ambitious animation studio. Like Toonstar, which I recently profiled, the Paris-based company has built its own software platform that uses AI to help creators figure out which stories will resonate with audiences and then expedite the process of turning them into animation. In this case, theyre stories for little kids.
Paris-based Animaj produces kid-friendly animation using its own software platform. [Photo: Courtesy of Animaj]
The vision that we have with all of our properties is to turn them into global franchises with all the different layers, Antoine Lhermitte, the companys CTO, told me. So we start on YouTube. Then we create a premium production [version] to sell to linear platforms, digital platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, etc. Then we layer in consumer products, and then, if the traction continues, the idea is to go to theaters. Lhermitte says hes hopeful the accelerator might lead to Animaj and Disney creating content together; the startup doesnt want to be a service provider that just licenses its software to other studios.
Then theres Haddy. At first blush, it might seem a bit of an outlier in the Disney Accelerator portfolio. The Florida-based company counts military, maritime, and furniture among the verticals its pursuing for its 3D printing technology, which tariffs have made newly enticing as a way to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. But the same factory that can crank out a 3D printed boat can also produce a full-size, real-world replica of King Louies throne from The Jungle Bookand has, as an experiment for Disneys Imagineering theme-park designers. (It took about 20 hours to print.)
Furniture 3D-printed in Haddys factory [Photo: Courtesy of Haddy]
Haddy was already working with Disney when it was invited to join this years accelerator program. The company has networked with around 200 Disney executives as a result of this association, and has found that the experience redounds to the benefit of its other businesses, and vice versa. You’re always learning, says head of sales Erin Smith. A boat that we print for Brunswick boats, for example, makes us more experienced and smarter when we print a boat for the Disney Jungle Cruise.
The fact that Haddy is well down the path of applying its technology to fields not at all tied to its Disney association reflects the accelerators investment strategy, which has evolved over time. At first, it focused on early-stage startups and offered each one a standard $120,000 investment (the same figure once offered by Y Combinator). Eventually, however, Disney concluded that it was better off striking bespoke deals with growth-stage startupsones whose future wouldnt be overly skewed by Disneys stake and the potential to sign up the company as a customer.
These further-along businesses arent reliant on Disney for the health of their business development pipelines, says Min. Disney is a pillar of what they’re trying to accomplish, but it’s one of many things, and we encourage that.
Which is not to say that even startups that are already booming cant benefit from being well-connected at Disney. ElevenLabs is best known for its ability to turn real peoples voices into uncannily accurate synthesized speech. When it joined the accelerators 2024 program, it had fewer than 100 employees but was already a unicorn. Now its at 350 people and is still hiring, and the contacts its made within Disney remain valuable. Sports, film, TVwe’re talking to all of them, because each of those divisions could use our product in so many different ways, says head of partnerships Dustin Blank. The conversations are always super interesting.
In one case, the accelerator welcomed a company was already a venerated institution, an unorthodox arrangement that seemed to have worked out well for all involved. When Epic Gamesthe creator of Unreal and the game development platform based on itjoined the 2017 Disney Accelerator program, it was more than 25 years old and on the cusp of releasing something called Fortnite. The massive multiplayer game went on to truly epic success. In 2024, the two companies announced a partnership involving Disney taking a $1.5 billion stake in Epic and collaborating with it on new games based on Disney franchises.
Like anyone investing in startups, Disney aims to see a financial return from its accelerators portfolio. It also clearly sees the potential to apply some of the technologies it learns about to keep its many businesses growing. (CFO Hugh Johnston spoke as part of the demo days video, during a presentation that name-checked the companys cofounder and original bean counter, Roy O. Disney, almost as often as his younger brother.) Mins original goal of bolstering the companys perception among techies remains crucial as well.
Yet another goal is allowing Disney to help shape the future of technology. Consider robotics, a hot topic at the moment that Rosen mentions when I ask her about emerging technologies that Disney Accelerator cares about (besides AI, of course). She notes the challenges a free-range Disney bot faces, such as safely weaving its way around theme-park visitors and food carts. But she also says the company might make a contribution to figuring out how to make robots more personable.
It’s that personality part where Disney creatives are uniquely positioned to [initiate] a real momentum shift in how robotics are thought about, she says. Those are areas that are very exciting, and we wouldn’t look at them in the same way that the broader market is.
Given that the company happens to have more than 60 years of eperience in getting humans to bond with robotsdating to when Disneyland got its Enchanted Tiki Room and Mr. Lincoln first read the Gettysburg Address at the 1964 New York Worlds Fairits not an idle claim. And its one no mere stripling of a startup can match.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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When fewer people belong to unions and unions have less power, the impact goes beyond wages and job security. Those changes can hurt public health and make people more unhappy.
Were economists who research labor and health issues. Those are two of the main findings of studies that we have conducted.
More unionization, more happiness
In the first study on this topic that we published in 2023, we found that increasing levels of union membership tends to make working-class people happier.
We zeroed in on a question in the General Social Survey, which the University of Chicago makes available. It asks respondents to choose whether they are very happy, somewhat happy or not at all happy with their life.
We found that, from 1993 to 2018, when the share of workers in counties along the borders of states with and without right-to-work laws who belong to unions rose by 1 percentage point, the average level of happiness for low-income residents moved 15% closer toward being very happya seemingly modest but noticeable change.
Right-to-work laws let workers skip paying union dues when theyre employed by a company that has negotiated a contract with a labor union. In states without right-to-work laws, those dues are mandatory. As a result, right-to-work laws weaken unions ability to negotiate better working conditions and reduce the share of workers who belong to unions.
But a higher rate of union membership didnt significantly affect the happiness of higher-income people.
Right-to-work laws
The first right-to-work laws were adopted by states in the 1940s. After a long lull, the pace picked up around 2000. These laws were in force in 26 states as of late 2025.
Four of those states made the switch between 2001 and 2015: Oklahoma in 2001, Indiana in 2012, Michigan in 2012 and Wisconsin in 2015. We used data collected in these four states to conduct what is known in economics as an event studya research method that provides before-and-after pictures of a significant change that affects large numbers of people.
Michigan repealed its right-to-work law in 2024, but our data is from 2001-2015, and Michigan became a right-to-work state during that period and remained one for the rest of that time.
Less unionization, more opioid overdoses
In a related working paper that we plan to publish in an upcoming edition of an academic journal, we looked into other effects of right-to-work laws. Specifically, we investigated whether, as more states adopted those laws, the gradual decline in union strength those statutes produce was contributing to an increase in opioid overdoses.
We used a research technique called the synthetic control method to assess whether declining union power has affected the number of opioid overdoses.
We drew our data from a variety of sources, including the Treatment Episode Data Set, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Multiple Cause of Death database, the Census Bureaus Current Population Survey, the union membership and coverage database, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illness and Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.
We found that both fatal and nonfatal opioid overdoses increased within six years of the enactment of right-to-work laws in all four of the states we studied.
We primarily found a connection between opioid overdoses and right-to-work laws among men and male teens between ages 16 and 64making them of working agewith dangerous jobs, such as roofing or freight moving, and little job security. They were people who tend to feel more job stress because they dont have control over their work tasks and schedules.
We didnt observe those same results for women or deaths from non-opioid drugs, such as cocaine.
Lower levels of unionization are linked to weaker job security and reduced workplace protections, previous research has shown. Our work suggests these factors may play a role in increasing demand for opioids.
Declining union membership
The share of U.S. workers who belong to unions has fallen by half in the past four decades, declining from just over 20% in 1983 to a little under 10% in 2024.
Because unions advocate for better and safer working conditions, they can raise wages and living standards for their members. Interestingly, some of these benefits can also extend to people who dont belong to unions.
An opioid use disorder crisis has devastated communities across the U.S. for more than 25 years. The death toll from drug overdoses soared from 17,500 in 2000 to 105,000 in 2023. The number of overdose deaths did fall in 2024, to about 81,000, but it remains historically high. Most fatal drug overdoses since te crisis began have been caused by opioids.
Throughout this crisis, government policies have focused largely on reducing the supply of prescription opioids, such as OxyContin, and illegal opioids, especially fentanyl, distributed outside the health care system.
Causes of despair
Despite successful interventions to shut down pill millsclinics that prescribe opioids without a valid medical reasonand expand access to prevention and treatment, drug overdoses remain a leading cause of death.
And we believe that our findings support results from earlier studies that determined despair is not just an emotional or biological reactionit can also be a response to social and economic conditions.
We are continuing to research the connections between union membership and public health. The next question we are working on is whether a decline in union membership can have a multigenerational impact, going beyond the workers employed today and affecting the lives of their children and grandchildren.
Samia Islam is a professor of economics at Boise State University and Kelly Chen is an associate professor of economics at Boise State University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Quantum computing insiders, investors, and skeptics have been waiting on an announcement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that has enormous implications for the future of the industry: the list of companies that have survived Stage A of the agencys Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) and are advancing to Stage B.
The QBI was launched in July 2024 to rigorously verify and validate whether any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation by 2033, according to DARPA. In essence, the QBI seeks to determine if a quantum computer technology is worth pursuingif its benefits will be greater than the effort and resources it takes to pursue them.
For a technology that could produce world-changing feats but remains far from maturityand into which billions of investment dollars have been flowing in recent monthsthe QBI validation is profound.
The QBIs first judgments, announced yesterday, reconfigure the competitive landscape, bolstering some powerful incumbents and boosting lesser-known players and outlier approaches. They also delivered a formidable gut punch to a couple of industry pioneers.
QBI is not a competition to narrow the field to a few winners. Rather, the aim is to evaluate each companys approach on its own merits DARPA said in a press release. The agency makes clear that multiple participants could demonstrate a path to an industrially useful quantum computer, or perhaps none of them.
The new quantum computing playing field
During Stage A of QBI, companies had six months to provide detailed technical concepts that showed feasibility for creating utility-scale quantum systems. The initial stage included 18 companiesIBM, Quantinuum, Atom Computing, Alice & Bob, IonQ, Rigetti, and Xanadu, among them.
These companies, which were eligible for up to $1 million in funding, represent a variety of approaches to building a quantum computer, down to their technology for constructing qubits, the fundamental building blocks of a quantum computation.
The 11 companies that were selected to move onto Stage B are pursuing different systems. Two companies, Atom Computing and QuEra Computing, use neutral atom qubits. IonQ and Quantinuum both use so-called trapped ions. Several companies use silicon spin qubits. IBM is pursuing superconducting qubits. And Xanadu uses a photonics-based qubit.
Now, moving into Stage B, they will be asked for a comprehensive research and development plan capable of realizing their quantum computer, with an assessment of the risks associated with the plan, and their mitigation approaches. In Stage C, companies will work with the government to verify and validate that their utility-scale quantum computer concept can be constructed as designed and operated as intended.
DARPA anticipates that additional teams will advance through stages A, B, and C. And companies have entered the evaluation process on varying timelinesGoogle Quantum AI, for example, joined lateresulting in staggered advancement across stages.
Two companies, Microsoft and PsiQuantum, have already advanced to Stage C in a separate but related DARPA initiative called Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC).
IBMs progression to Stage B of DARPAs Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is a firm validation of IBMs approach to delivering a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, said IBMs director of research Jay Gambetta in a company press release. As the industry advances, we look forward to working with DARPA as they continue an unbiased review of potential viable strategies across the field.
It’s not that we got in that matters as much as making sure we didnt not get in, says Christian Weedbrook, CEO and founder of Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies. A lot of late nights the team was pushing themselves, and I said, we don’t want a black mark across us now for getting the stage B. One of the great things about [the process] is that it really forced us in different teams to work harder together.
Earlier this week, Xanadu announced plans to go public via SPAC, which Weedbrook expects to happen in the first or second quarter of 2026. This would be the only way, currently at least, that investors can invest in a photonics-based approach, he says.
Soul searching, and new funding
Even if you are able to do months of diligence, nothing really beats the team of scientists and researchers from across the [Department of Defense] labs, the national labs, and the intelligence and universities ecosystem that DARPA has assembled to do this diligence, says Prineha Narang, a professor of physical sciences and electrical and computer engineering at UCLA and a partner at deep-tech venture firm DCVC. This is far more than any VC or anyone on the private capital side could do.
Narang says that companies that didnt make it to Stage B should take it very seriously.
It doesn’t mean that they dont have an approach that could eventually work, but just that today they couldn’t articulate and present [that plan] to DARPA, she adds.
The Stage A contenders that didnt make the cut include Alice & Bob, which uses innovative cat qubits, Atlantic Quantum, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oxford Ionics, and Rigetti Computing, which was founded in 2013 and is the first full-stack, universal pure-play quantum computing company.
On the other hand, Narang notes that a few companies that made it to Stage B have term sheets that call out the QBI outcome as a condition for the next round of funding. Several investments and deals are now in flight, she says. [They are] happening, and happening faster than the usual pace of these.
President Donald Trump is adjusting his messaging strategy to win over voters who are worried about the cost of living with plans to emphasize new tax breaks and show progress on fighting inflation.The messaging is centered around affordability, and the push comes after inflation emerged as a major vulnerability for Trump and Republicans in Tuesday’s elections, in which voters overwhelmingly said the economy was their biggest concern.Democrats took advantage of concerns about affordability to run up huge margins in the New Jersey and Virginia governor races, flipping what had been a strength for Trump in the 2024 presidential election into a vulnerability going into next year’s midterm elections.White House officials and others familiar with their thinking requested anonymity to speak for this article in order to not get ahead of the president’s actions. They stressed that affordability has always been a priority for Trump, but the president plans to talk about it more, as he did Thursday when he announced that Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk would reduce the price of their anti-obesity drugs.“We are the ones that have done a great job on affordability, not the Democrats,” Trump said at an event in the Oval Office to announce the deal. “We just lost an election, they said, based on affordability. It’s a con job by the Democrats.”The White House is keeping up a steady drumbeat of posts on social media about prices and deals for Thanksgiving dinner staples at retailers such as Walmart, Lidl, Aldi and Target.“I don’t want to hear about the affordability, because right now, we’re much less,” Trump told reporters Thursday, arguing that things are much better for Americans with his party in charge.“The only problem is the Republicans don’t talk about it,” he said.
The outlook for inflation is unclear
As of now, the inflation outlook has worsened under Trump. Consumer prices in September increased at an annual rate of 3%, up from 2.3% in April, when the president first began to roll out substantial tariff hikes that suddenly burdened the economy with uncertainty. The AP Voter Poll showed the economy was the leading issue in Tuesday’s elections in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City and California.Grocery prices continue to climb, and recently, electricity bills have emerged as a new worry. At the same time, the pace of job gains has slowed, plunging 23% from the pace a year ago.The White House maintains a list of talking points about the economy, noting that the stock market has hit record highs multiple times and that the president is attracting foreign investment. Trump has emphasized that gasoline prices are coming down, and maintained that gasoline is averaging $2 a gallon, but AAA reported Thursday that the national average was $3.08, about two cents lower than a year ago.“Americans are paying less for essentials like gas and eggs, and today the Administration inked yet another drug pricing deal to deliver unprecedented health care savings for everyday Americans,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.Trump gets briefed about the economy by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials at least once a week and there are often daily discussions on tariffs, a senior White House official said, noting Trump is expected to do more domestic travel next year to make his case that he’s fixing affordability.But critics say it will be hard for Trump to turn around public perceptions on affordability.“He’s in real trouble and I think it’s bigger than just cost of living,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal economic advocacy group.Owens noted that Trump has “lost his strength” as voters are increasingly doubtful about Trump’s economic leadership compared to Democrats, adding that the president doesn’t have the time to turn around public perceptions of him as he continues to pursue broad tariffs.
New hype about income tax cuts ahead of April
There will be new policies rolled out on affordability, a person familiar with the White House thinking said, declining to comment on what those would be. Trump on Thursday indicated there will be more deals coming on drug prices. Two other White House officials said messaging would change but not policy.A big part of the administration’s response on affordability will be educating people ahead of tax season about the role of Trump’s income tax cuts in any refunds they receive in April, the person familiar with planning said. Those cuts were part of the sprawling bill Republicans muscled through Congress in July.This individual stressed that the key challenge is bringing prices down while simultaneously having wages increase, so that people can feel and see any progress.There’s also a bet that the economy will be in a healthier place in six months. With Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s term ending in May, the White House anticipates the start of consistent cuts to the Fed’s benchmark interest rate. They expect inflation rates to cool and declines in the federal budget deficit to boost sentiment in the financial markets.But the U.S. economy seldom cooperates with a president’s intentions, a lesson learned most recently by Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, who saw his popularity slump after inflation spiked to a four-decade high in June 2022.The Trump administration maintains it’s simply working through an inflation challenge inherited from Biden, but new economic research indicates Trump has created his own inflation challenge through tariffs.Since April, Harvard University economist Alberto Cavallo and his colleagues, Northwestern University’s Paola Llama and Universidad de San Andres’ Franco Vazquez, have been tracking the impact of the import taxes on consumer prices.In an October paper, the economists found that the inflation rate would have been drastically lower at 2.2%, had it not been for Trump’s tariffs.The administration maintains that tariffs have not contributed to inflation. They plan to make the case that the import taxes are helping the economy and dismiss criticisms of the import taxes as contributing to inflation as Democratic talking points.The fate of Trump’s country-by-country tariffs is currently being decided by the Supreme Court, where justices at a Wednesday hearing seemed dubious over the administration’s claims that tariffs were essentially regulations and could be levied by a president without congressional approval. Trump has maintained at times that foreign countries pay the tariffs and not U.S. citizens, a claim he backed away from slightly Thursday.“They might be paying something,” he said. “But when you take the overall impact, the Americans are gaining tremendously.”
Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
Josh Boak, Associated Press
Yesterday, Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) shareholders overwhelmingly approved the controversial and historic pay package deal for the electric vehicle makers CEO, Elon Musk. That package is worth up to nearly $1 trillion in compensation for Muskprovided the company reaches certain milestones.
But if those milestones are met, it would make Musk, already the worlds richest man, the worlds first trillionaire. Heres what you need to know about the historic pay package and how investors and Teslas shares are reacting to the news.
Whats in Musks historic Tesla pay deal?
At Teslas investor meeting yesterday, over three-quarters of shareholders voted to approve Musks nearly $1 trillion compensation package. However, the package isnt a blank check filled with thirteen digits before the decimal place.
Instead, it is an agreement that includes a series of milestones Tesla needs to reach under Musks leadership. With each milestone reached, Musk receives some of the pay packages agreed-upon sum, mostly in the form of Tesla shares.
As Fast Company previously reported, those milestones wont be easy. They include the following:
20 million Tesla vehicles delivered
10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions
1 million robots delivered
1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation
A series of adjusted EBITDA benchmarks
A market cap for Tesla of at least $8.5 trillion
All of these are a tall order, particularly the last one. No company in history has ever come close to an $8.5 trillion market capitalization. Last month, NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) briefly became the worlds first $5 trillion company. Today, it retains its number one spot, with a market cap of around $4.4 trillion.
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) currently come in at numbers two and three, with market caps of $4 trillion and $3.6 trillion, respectively. As for Tesla, the company currently ranks as having the 10th largest market cap in the world, at $1.4 trillion.
That means Teslas stock price would have to increase by more than six times todays valuation if Musk is to get the full compensation deal payout. And thats not even to mention the other lofty milestones Tesla needs to achieve under Musk, including delivery of one million robots into the wild.
Still, the majority of voting shareholders seem to believe that the historic pay deal is not only appropriate to retain Musk as the companys leader, but that he, of all people, could take Tesla to a place itand no other companyhas ever been before.
How has Wall Street reacted?
As you would expect from such a controversial pay package, opinions on Tesla shareholders approving the $1 trillion compensation are mixed.
Reuters spoke to a number of Wall Street insiders. Among them was Mike ORourke, chief market strategist at Jones Trading, who said that given Musk could easily abandon the struggling Tesla to run his other private companies, it was worth it for shareholders to lock his leadership in.
Nonetheless, ORourke added, it is highly unlikely this works out well when a $1.5 trillion company needs to award a $1 trillion pay package to the richest man in the world.”
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, told the outlet that given the demanding milestones required by the compensation package, Tesla investors had little to lose: If Musk does get the $1 trillion, shareholders will have done very nicely indeed.
As could be expected, many everyday retail investors on social media who are Musk fans and Tesla bulls cheered the passage of the compensation package.
How have TSLA shares reacted?
While Tesla shareholders have now approved the historic package, nothing much actually changes for Tesla today.
Still, shares in Tesla have fallen since the markets opened this morning, their first day of trading after shareholders approved the pay package.
As of the time of this writing, TSLA shares are currently down about 2.5% to $434.40. They had fallen by over 4.5% at one point right after the markets opened.
Yet its hard to take any meaning from TSLAs price drop this morning. A low single-digit drop could just be due to everyday profit taking, and not a signal that investors think the approval of the compensation package was bad news for the company (indeed, the majority of voting investors clearly thought the deal was a good thing).
Year to date, TSLA shares are now up around 6% as of the time of this writing. Over the past 12 months, TSLA shares have risen more than 44%.
As the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered flight reductions at 40 major airports, including Atlanta, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.
The move begins with affecting 4% of flights, with plans to ramp up to impact 1 in 10 flights at those airports, disrupting travel plans for thousands of Americans every day.
But Patriotic Millionaires, a group of high-net-worth individuals who advocate for more progressive taxes in order to close the wealth gap, is suggesting an alternative that it says would spare commercial airline passengers and still offer relief for air traffic controllers: Just cancel all private flights.
Private jets specificallywhich are more expensive and hold more passengers than small private planesmake up one out of every six flights handled by the FAA, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.
Private jet use has also been soaring in recent years, and the U.S. is responsible for the most private flights.
If you need a 10% reduction [in flights], you can get 100% of your reduction from the private planes. You do not need to affect commercial flights, period, says Erica Payne, president and founder of Patriotic Millionaires.
To Payne, the FAA is choosing to have everyone suffer rather than grounding planes that are destroying the planet and flying one or two people at a time in the lap of luxury.
Some private flights may well end up being part of those 4% to 10% reductions happening at major hubs. But Patriotic Millionaires is suggesting that the FAA target private flights specifically, sparing commercial passengers.
Private jets and public resources
Everyone who flies pays toward the taxes that help fund the FAA, which then pays the salaries of its employees, including air traffic controllers. During the government shutdown, air traffic controllers are considered essential workers, and required to keep doing their jobs without pay.
That reality is now straining air traffic controllers, many of whom work mandatory overtime six days a week, and so arent able to take on other jobs. Theyve been increasingly taking six days.
Already, at least 3.4 million travelers have been affected by staffing shortages, according to the industry group Airlines for America.
For the average airline passenger, a 7.5% tax on their ticket price, plus a charge that can go up to $4.50, goes toward the FAAs Airport and Airway Trust Fund. Private jet flyers contribute just 2% of the taxes that make up that fund.
While some private flights take off from major airport hubs, there are also airports that only serve private air travel, like Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles, one of the countrys busiest aviation hubs.
That airport is not on the FAAs list of affected high traffic airports.
In some cases, airports that mainly serve private jets have also collected taxpayer dollars, like the Napa Valley Airport in California, which collected $6.3 million over two years.
Private jet travelers have already gotten away with having the American taxpayers pick up their jet setting, Payne says. We are funding the jet-setting pollution-causing air travel of the richest people in the country.
Now were being asked to suffer cancellations and delays, when weve already been picking up their transportation costs for decades, she continues. And theres an easy way out of this. Patriotic Millionaires are saying: shut down private air travel during the government shutdown, and use that extra capacity.
Fast Company reached out to the FAA for comment. An automatic reply said the agency is not responding to routine press requests during the shutdown.
A highlight on wealth inequality
To Payne, this move to affect commercial flights while seemingly ignoring private jet travel is another example of the way issues around wealth inequality are being highlighted across the country.
The transportation secretary stands up there and says 1 out of every 10 people in America flying somewhere are going to suffer a delay or cancellation, while wealthy people are not even asked to park their planes and fly first class for a few days, Payne says.
President Trumps recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act also gives more than $1 trillion in tax cuts to the countrys top 1%.
Patriotic Millionairess suggestion to the FAA also comes the same week that Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race. Mamdani ran on taxing the wealthy in order to fund programs like free childcare and buses. Billionaires spent millions of dollars opposing his campaign.
Patriotic Millionaires says it is reaching out to all members of the House and Senate committees to suggest they ground private planes rather than affect commercial flights. The group is also creating a series of social media posts to highlight the idea, including ones that feature Patriotic Millionaires member Abigail Disney.
This needs to become an issue, Payne says. We plan to do everything in our power to make it an issue.
The headlines are clear: AI is disrupting entry-level jobs across industries, including consulting and professional services.
There’s just one problem. Eliminating these roles overlooks a critical business needyour pipeline of next generation leaders. The rush from pyramid to diamond workforce models is short-sighted. In the pyramid model, you grow leaders from the ground up. In the diamond model, you cut the base and bet on later-stage talent to carry the weight. It may look efficient now, but it comes at the expense of long-term leadership development.
If we don’t shift the trajectory, it’s likely to worsen the leadership gender gap. Despite women outpacing men in college graduation rates, recent Russell Reynolds data finds men are still 2.5 times more likely to be executives than women, and 10 times more likely to be CEOs at S&P 100 organizations. Yet, women remain underrepresented in feeder roles to the top job.
The solution isn’t some new, fancy workplace tech platform or another mandatory training program. It’s intentional mentorship that directly addresses barriers women experience in advancing their careers.
WHY UPSKILLING PROGRAMS FALL SHORT
So why are companies still betting on upskilling programs? They look great on slides and earnings calls. They’re measurable, seemingly fair, and relatively simple to implement. They’re also not moving the needle.
The problem lies in traditional delivery. Put simply, classroom or lecture settings without immediate practice opportunities fall short. Online training will not build our next generation of leaders. The approaches overlook two human-centric barriers that many professionals, particularly women, face: representation and confidence. Seeing people in top positions who look like you proves you can make it there, too.
Harvard Business School research found that women are less likely than men to apply for advanced jobs because they think they aren’t qualified enough. I distinctly remember when a new leadership opportunity came my way. Instead of immediately jumping at it, I spent an entire day poring over role requirements and determining whether the position felt true to my identity. At that point, I just considered myself to fall squarely in the marketer role. Ultimately, I took a chance, accepting the new role.
In that critical moment, I was fortunate to have mentors who pushed me to think about myself and my capabilities more expansively. That push, more than any certificate, gave me confidence to take on the challenge. This mindset shift allowed me to then pay it back, leading to countless hours in the trenches, coaching team members on how to best deliver their tasks, regardless of how the members professionally defined themselves.
THE MENTORSHIP ADVANTAGE
Why is quality mentorship so effective? When done right, it’s deliberate and rooted in real experience. Here’s my playbook, as seen through a soccer lens, a sport near and dear to my heart:
1. Find the right fit. Building a team with myriad skillsets is essential to any winning soccer club. It’s ideal to have both male and female mentors. There’s value in someone who thinks differently and may have unique strengths you don’t have. And there’s value that can only come from someone who has walked in your shoes. Take maternity leave, for example. Women working with me tend to have easier transitions back because I have lived it and my philosophy is to always celebrate the small moments that carry outsized positive impact.
Mentors don’t have to be all things to mentees. Instead, seek mentors with specific strengths. You might seek a leader known for bold, creative thinking, and another leader strong in people management.
2. Get in the trenches. I believe in “learning in combat”education that comes from sitting in client meetings and sales calls, being in the room where tough conversations happen, and getting real-time feedback on actual work. Time spent on the field together always outweighs theoretical examples and 1:1 coaching.
3. Be vulnerable. For me, that means showing people the marshmallow I am on the inside of this executive exterior. Mentors should create an environment where mentees feel comfortable showing their strengths and weaknesses. Authenticity beats a fake front any day. This comes from celebrating your wins, but also asking your teammates for help when you are struggling. A defender under pressure passes back to the goalkeeper, trusting their teammate to help the team stay in controla reminder that asking for support keeps everyone moving forward.
4. Know when to listen and when to speak up. Real mentorship is about creating space for people to figure things out, not just giving advice without hearing what someone has to say.
When mentors are effective listeners, they can better advocate. Sometimes that means being the voice advocating for an idea others gloss over because you see the potential in the person surfacing it. Other times, it means understanding a mentee’s dream job and clearing the way for them to secure it. Any good coach can attest to the importance of this approach with their players.
5. Get out of the way. Too many leaders listen to junior colleagues talk about their dreams, then forget to give them the opportunity to reach them. In soccer, the left wing fights to let the striker take the shot. But if the striker never gets the ball, it’s useless to have that position. Say “ok” and let your players play.
There’s a delta between knowing mentorship works and building programs that deliver. The most effective programs have leadership buy-in, authentic matching, and accountability. Companies must expect leaders to coach, then create space and accountability for it. Not every leader needs to be a mentor, but you need enough who will and who want to.
DIAMONDS AREN’T FOREVER (IN THE WORKPLACE)
ROI and value creation remain paramount. Companies can continue chasing short-term gains and allow AI to eliminate their next generation of leadersmale or femaleor they can do the harder work of building intentional mentorship relationships that create a more level playing field.
Companies that over-index towards these diamond models will inevitably have to swing back. The importance of strong mentorship will never be obsolete. The question is whether companies realize this before or after losing a generation of strong, diverse talent to organizations that remained focused on their potential.
Casey Foss is chief commercial officer of West Monroe.
When Carly Kaprive left a job in Kansas City and moved to Chicago a year ago, she figured it would take three to six months to find a new position. After all, the 32-year old project manager had never been unemployed for longer than three months.Instead, after 700 applications, she’s still looking, wrapped up in a frustrating and extended job hunt that is much more difficult than when she last looked for work just a couple of years ago. With uncertainty over interest rates, tariffs, immigration, and artificial intelligence roiling much of the economy, some companies she’s interviewed with have abruptly decided not to fill the job at all.“I have definitely had mid-interview roles be eliminated entirely, that they are not going to move forward with even hiring anybody,” she said.Kaprive is caught in a historical anomaly: The unemployment rate is low and the economy is still growing, but those out of work face the slowest pace of hiring in more than a decade. Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, calls it a “jobless boom.”While big corporate layoff announcements typically grab the most attention, it has been the unwillingness of many companies to add workers that has created a more painful job market than the low 4.3% unemployment rate would suggest. It is also more bifurcated: The “low hire, low fire” economy has meant fewer layoffs for those with jobs, while the unemployed struggle to find work.“It’s like an insider-outsider thing,” Guy Berger, head of research at the Burning Glass Institute said, “where outsiders that need jobs are struggling to get their foot in, even as insiders are insulated by what up until now is a low-layoff environment.”Several large companies have recently announced tens of thousands of job cuts in the past few weeks, including UPS, Target, and IBM, though Berger said it is too soon to tell whether they signal a turn for the worse in the economy. But a rise in job cuts would be particularly challenging with hiring already so low.For now, it’s harder than ever to get a clear read on the job market because the government shutdown has cut off the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly employment reports. The October jobs report was scheduled for release Friday but has been delayed, like the September figures before it. The October report may be less comprehensive when it is released because not all the data may be collected.Before the shutdown, the Labor Department reported that the hiring rate the number of people hired in a given month, as a percentage of those employed fell to 3.2% in August, matching the lowest figure outside the pandemic since March 2013.Back then, the unemployment rate was a painful 7.5%, as the economy slowly recovered from the job losses from the 2008-2009 Great Recession. That is much higher than August’s 4.3%.Many of those out of work are skeptical of the current low rate. Brad Mislow, 54, has been mostly unemployed for the past three years after losing a job as an advertising executive in New York City. Now he is substitute teaching to make ends meet.“It is frustrating to hear that the unemployment rate is low, the economy is great,” he said. “I think there are people in this economy who are basically fighting every day and holding on to pieces of flotsam in the shark-filled waters or, they have no idea what it’s like.”With the government closed, financial markets are paying closer attention to private-sector data, but that is also mixed. On Thursday, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas unnerved investors with a report that announced job cuts surged 175% in October from a year ago.Yet on Wednesday, payroll processor ADP said that net hiring picked up in October as businesses added 42,000 jobs, after two months of declines. Still, the gain was modest. ADP’s figures are based on anonymous data from the 26 million workers at its client companies.Separately, Revelio Labs, a workplace analytics company, estimated Thursday that the economy shed 9,000 jobs in October. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimates that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4% last month.Even when the government was releasing data, economists and officials at the Federal Reserve weren’t sure how healthy the job market was or where it was headed next. A sharp drop in immigration and stepped-up deportations have helped keep the unemployment rate low simply by reducing the supply of workers. The economy doesn’t need to create as many jobs to keep the unemployment rate from rising.Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, has called in a “curious balance” because both the supply of and demand for workers has fallen.Economists point to many reasons for the hiring slowdown, but most share a common thread: Greater uncertainty from tariffs, the potential impact of artificial intelligence, and now the government shutdown. While investment in data centers to power AI is booming, elevated interest rates have kept many other parts of the economy weak, such as manufacturing and housing.“The concentration of economic gains (in AI) has left the economy looking better on paper than it feels to most Americans,” Swonk said.Younger Americans have borne the brunt of the hiring slowdown, but many older workers have also struggled.Suzanne Elder, 65, is an operations executive with extensive experience in health care, and two years ago the Chicago resident also found work quickly three months after she left a job, she had three offers. Now she’s been unemployed since April.She is worried that her age is a challenge, but isn’t letting it hold her back. “I got a job at 63, so I don’t see a reason to not get a job at 65,” she said.Like many job-hunters, she has been stunned by the impersonal responses from recruiters, often driven by hiring software. She received one email from a company that thanked her for speaking with them, though she never had an interview. Another company that never responded to her resume asked her to fill out a survey about their interaction.Weak hiring has meant unemployment spells are getting longer, according to government data. More than one-quarter of those out of work have been unemployed for more than six months or longer, a figure that rose sharply in July and August and is up from 21% a year ago.Swonk said that such increases are unusual outside recessions.A rising number of the unemployed have also given up on their job searches, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. That also holds down the unemployment rate because people who stop looking aren’t counted as unemployed.But Kaprive is still sticking with it she’s taken classes abot Amazon’s web services platform to boost her technology skills.“We can’t be narrow-minded in what we’re willing to take,” she said.
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
Despite its status as an architectural celebrity, the Breuer building, commissioned by the Whitney Museum in the 1960s, has never had an easy relationship with New York City. With a hulking, top-heavy build, brooding dark-gray granite cladding, and nearly windowless facade, its as introverted as buildings come, standing confrontationally against its traditional Upper East Side neighbors.
Either you love it or hate it. Critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the building as an acquired taste akin to olives or warm beer (how appetizing) yet celebrated the maximum artistry and almost hypnotic skill of its namesake architect, the Bauhaus-trained modernist Marcel Breuer.
Now the historic building, also known as 945 Madison, has entered its latest chapter as the new worldwide headquarters for the 281-year-old auction house Sothebys. After a careful and subtle renovation by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the space has now reopened to the public.
For Sothebys, the updated building demonstrates the future of auction houses as cultural destinations. It wants its new headquarters to be a place people come for exhibitions, art fairs, lectures, panel discussions, retail, and fine dining, while better serving its collector clients with bespoke, high-end art-buying experiences. What better place to bid on masterpieces than from inside one?
The hope is that the new building will bring a competitive edge to Sothebys. It arrives at a complicated time for the business, which has reportedly plunged into greater debt since billionaire Patrick Drahi took ownership in 2019. It’s also facing external headwinds as the art market slumps, prompting auction houses to diversify what they sell, cultivate new collectors, and digitize. Sothebys was responsible for $6 billion worth of sales in 2024, down from a record high of $8 billion in 2022.
Architecture to the rescue?
It’s museum quality, but it’s the art auction house philosophy, says Steve Wrightson, global head of real estate, facilities, and security for Sothebys. I think people who’ve been here before are going to be pleasantly surprised.
[Photo: Stefan Ruiz/courtesy Sothebys]
An untouchable history
Change hasnt come easy to the Breuer building, and throughout its history suggestions of alterations have been met with severe skepticism. Soon after the Whitney Museum opened in 1966, it outgrew the quarters Breuer built for it, ushering in an era of uncertainty for the building. Numerous failed expansion attemptsby Norman Foster in the 70s, Michael Graves in the 80s, and Rem Koolhaas in the aughtsignited battles royal between critics and architects that played out on the pages of dailies and weeklies.
Paul Goldberger, writing for The New York Times, described the building as a paradox: To add to it is to subtract from it. Eventually, the Whitney gave up on renovating and decamped for the Meatpacking District in 2015.
Then a series of adaptations came, demonstrating that something different might be for the better. In 2015, the Whitney leased the space to the Met, which commissioned a $15 million restoration by Beyer Blinder Belle that brought renewed luster to the buildings bluestone floors, concrete walls, and bronze fixtures. Then the Frick Collection moved into the space temporarily to critical appeal; turns out Breuers austere brutalism is a transcendent setting for traditional portraiture.
In 2023, the revolving door of tenants closed when the Whitney sold the building to Sothebys for an astounding $100 million. The acquisition was part of a real estate strategy that began at Sothebys about six years ago. Instead of housing all of its functions under one roof, as it did at its former York Street headquarters, the company decided to assemble a portfolio of spaces dedicated to a single purpose.
A building in Long Island City that Sothebys purchased in 2022 is now its processing and storage center. Though the company sold its York Street building to Cornell Universitys medical school in October, it will lease four floors for offices. For auctions and exhibitions, it sought a location central to collectors with a street-facing presence. The Breuer building was right at the bulls eye of the area the real estate team identified, Wrightson says. This was the heart of the arts and culture scene in New York City, he says.
[Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
Same structure, new function
While museums and auction houses both display art, the shift in function from a space that stewards culture to a sales floor represents a major conceptual shift. Because of this, Sothebys and Herzog & de Meuron (who collaborated with the local architecture firm PDBW on the project) had their work cut out for them, even though they always intended to apply a gentle hand to the renovation.
Our deep respect for Breuer drove the project from the outset, says Wim Walschap, a senior partner at the firm. Portions of the building are still under construction, including a new freight elevator and Marcel, the Roman and Williams-designed restaurant on the lower level. But the majority of the renovation, which encompasses a refreshed lobby and four floors of gallery and auction space above, is complete.
Sothebys Breuer lobby gallery features works from the collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
Still, preservationists worried that the Breuer building would be permanently and unsympathetically altered; they successfully lobbied the city to designate it as an individual and interior landmark, which affects the exterior plus the lobby, staircase, and portions of the restaurant visible from the street. Moreover, even though Sothebys is keeping the building open to the public, theres a distinction between that notion and a public building, wrote Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. Museums exist to preserve culture; the art market exists to make a profit off the exchange of a commodity. Going to the Breuer will be like going to a wake.
The actual experience is more like visiting your old home after the new owners have moved in: The spaces are familiar but different. For the Breuer, we kept what carries identity and public life: structure and spatial sequence, primary materials and tactility, calibrated light, and the way a building meets the street, Walschap says. We removed later accretions that cloud the original intent and revived lost spaces where they clarified the experience.
Limited-edition Herms Birkin bags [Photo: Stefan Ruiz/courtesy Sothebys]
All the features that made the building distinctivecrossing over the moat of the sculpture garden, the luminous lobby ceiling, the large windowsare still there. But the concrete benches in the lobby are now vitrines, and the coat check in the corner is a retail space selling luxury lifestyle products like Patek Philippe watches, first editions of literary classics like Alice in Wonderland, and limited-edition Birkin bags. The original galleries, which were not landmarked, are structurally the same as before. However, the second levels dark parquet floor has been changed to white oak. We tried to get it refinished and it was just splintering so we had to replace it, Wrightson says.
A bit like theater
The most major interventions to the Breuer involved modifying the building to better serve the logistical needs of Sothebys, which are more demanding than a museum due to the volume of objects and number of exhibitions it displays in a year. A museum might have a dozen special exhibitions over the course of a year; Sothebys averages 125. It’s a bit like theater, but it’s also like a Formula One event, Wrightson says of the precision turnover that happens. The goal is to be able to change an entire exhibition in 48 hours.
Most changes to the building that make this possible are completely out of sight from visitors: Herzog & de Meuron lengthened the loading dock and inserted a new freight elevator in what were formerly administrative spaces in the northeastern section of the building. This way, Wrightson says, we can maneuver in the background.
In the lobby: Frank Stellas Concentric Square (left) and Jean Arps Ptolémée III [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
Sothebys has 30% more exhibition space than the buildings previous incarnation as the Frick Madison. To find this room, Herzog & de Meuron converted back-of-house and administrative areas into galleries, which sometimes resemble typical white-box galleries that feel like they could be anywhere. Instead of replicating Breuers tectonic sensibility in the new exhibition spaces, the firm channeled his intentions. New work aligns with the existing rhythms and joints, remains legible and light touch, and, whre possible, is reversible, Walschap says.
From left: Dorothea Tannings Interior with Sudden Joy, Frida Kahlos El sueo, and Victor Brauners Maison hantée will be auctioned November 20, 2025. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
Back when Breuer designed the building, the Whitneys collection primarily consisted of painting and sculpture, and his structure is well suited for those mediums. Sothebys sells a far wider range of objects and artwork, so having a blank canvas gives the exhibition teams more options for viewing experiences. We could have a dinosaur in a gallery one day and then the next day it could be a basketball jersey, Wrightson says. So we really have to be able to plan for all of those different needs.
The fifth floor, which the Frick used for offices, is now primarily gallery space, plus flexible work space for about 50 Sothebys employees who need to be on-site. The public hasn’t seen [this floors] windows and skylights for the better part of a decade, Wrightson says. He thinks jewelry and watches, which benefit from natural light, will look especially good here.
A site for desire
Adaptability was a critical element of the renovation to support the range of objects Sothebys sells but also the new formats it uses to sell them, like online auctions and livestreams. To make installations efficient, the design team created a metal-framed wall system that straps to the concrete coffered ceiling that Breuer designed. And to give curators more options to illuminate art, Herzog & de Meuron created custom LED track lighting, which nestles into the concrete ceiling, that can be operated remotely.
The ceiling also proved to be an ideal mount for cameras that Sothebys uses for virtual sales. When we first started doing livestreams back in June of 2021, it was an army of people who would come in with multiple giant boom cameras and we’d have massive control rooms set up with cables spread out everywhere. That’s gone, Wrightson says. Most of that is now happening remotely with what looks like joysticks.
The redesigned fourth floor of the Breuer currently holds works from the Leonard A. Lauder collection scheduled for auction on November 18, 2025. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
The Breuer building gives Sothebys more options for what an art buying, shopping, or appreciation experience embodies. The buildings fourth floor, which is a double-height space, will serve as the main gallery space most of the time and convert into an auction room whenever there is a sale. (Sothebys is still working out what the auction room will look like.) This also means creating more opportunities for exclusivity.
The levels mezzanine, which also used to be offices, now features private viewing areas and skyboxes for clients who want a birds-eye view of the action. A former conservation studio is now a viewing area for works that require black lights to examine. Meanwhile, the auctioneers who prefer to have more intimate sales, like those who specialize in wine and watches, have the option to use the restaurant, which visitors will be able to access directly from Madison Avenue once its open next year. They like more of a banquet-style table and more of a playful experience, Wrightson says.
With its new headquarters, Sothebys architectural language is more aligned with the mass appeal of a major cultural institution than the art market. Its trying to make auction houses cool. I can imagine regular museumgoers who havent stepped foot in an auction house before will be thrilled about admission-free access to see Kahlos and Klimts before collectors squirrel them away, just as I can see the thrill collectors might take in going shopping in what feels like a museum. As its viral auctioneer Phyllis Kao told Ssense, Sothebys really sells desire; a pedigreed set and setting enhances that effect.
During the peak of the Breuer building style in the 1980s, Village Voice critic Michael Sorkin summed up the challenges of retooling an architectural darling. Adding to a masterpiece is always difficult, calling for discipline, sensitivity, restraint, he wrote. Above all, though, it calls for respect.
Thankfully, outstanding original architecture remains crucial to all the audiences Sothebys wants to welcome into its world. Whether or not visitors will be pleasantly surprised, as Wrightson hopes, may come down to how they feel about the art market itself.
When he takes office next year, Zohran Mamdani will be the first mayor of New York City in decades not to own a car.
Mamdaniwho bikes and rides public transit to workwants to make city buses both faster to ride and free, building on a fare-free pilot he helped run in 2023. He also plans to expand the citys network of bike lanes, add more car-free streets in front of schools, and wants to pedestrianize more areas in Manhattan as congestion pricing has reduced traffic.
“In a city where the majority of households are car-free, we haven’t had a car-free mayor in a really long time,” says Alexa Sledge, communications director at the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives. “It’s really exciting to see how he can prioritize the vast majority of the New Yorkers who do walk, bike, and take public transportation every single day.”
Mamdani inherits a city with streets that have massively transformed over the last two decades. “People have seen their streets change in real time,” says Janette Sadik-Khan, the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation under the Bloomberg Administration.
Sadik-Khan, now a principal at Bloomberg Associates, built nearly 400 miles of bike lanes, launched Citi Bike, introduced new rapid bus lanes, created dozens of plazas, and pedestrianized Times Square. The changes have continued to roll out. New York now has 1,500 miles of bike lanes, more than half a million daily cyclists, and a mile-long stretch of 14th Street dedicated entirely to buses.
Under the city’s Streets Plan, passed in 2019, Mamdani’s administration must add 50 miles of bike lanes and 30 miles of bus lanes each yeartargets the Adams administration missed. But he wants to go farther. He’s proposed making buses free to ride, though that’s likely to be a tough sell with the MTA. He also wants to bring true bus rapid transit to the city.
“A car-free bus lane can move 8,000 people an hour; meanwhile a busway on a car-free street can move 25,000 people an hour in each direction,” he told Streetsblog earlier this year. “This is an essential service that New Yorkers need, especially those in transit deserts or those forced to rely on the poor service of our current bus system.” Right now, he says, city buses only move at an average of 8 miles an hour.
The 14th Street Busway sped up buses by 30%, and other major roads across the cityincluding in the outer boroughscould see the same results with a similar design. “People walking and biking and taking transit far outnumber those in cars, but the street does not reflect that reality,” says Sadik-Khan.
Improving reliability matters as much as cost, she says. “New Yorkers don’t just want more affordable transit. They want more frequent and reliable service, so they’re not rolling the dice every time they go to and from work,” she says. Other than dedicated bus lanes, other tweaks to street design could help improve speeds, including “bulb-out” bus stops that allow buses to pick up passengers without pulling over to the side of the road. The city can also roll out more traffic signals that give buses priority at lights.
To improve the experience of biking, Sadik-Khan says that the city needs to find a way to deal with the surge of e-bikes and scooters that are too fast for bike lanes now. Mamdani could consider a new type of bike lane, she says. “New York City could be the first in the nation to dedicate lanes on avenues and in crosstown streets to faster bikes and scooters, which would take them out of the way for regular bike riders and pedestrians and make the streets much safer for everybody,” she says.
Mamdani wants to pedestrianize “vast swaths” of the new congestion pricing zone, along with streets near public open space and schools. It’s an ambitious vision, though not impossible. Paris has transformed even more radically than New York, turning a highway into park space, planting tens of thousands of parking spaces with trees, closing more than 100 streets to cars, charging SUVs extra to park, and making rush hour look more like Copenhagen, with streets filled with bikes. Other cities have also reshaped around pedestrians, like Barcelona, which now has several car-free superblocks.
The same scale of change could happen in New York. “There’s absolutely no reason we couldn’t do it here,” says Sadik-Kahn. “We have all of the scaffolding for it. I think it’s really a matter of imagination and implementation.”
Even after years of improvements in New York, it’s still a challenge to get support for new bike lanes and other changes. But Mamdani has one key advantage: he’s skilled at communicating a vision. “I think he’s done an extraordinary job of communicating the importance of change in this election,” she says. “He’s definitely laid things out. And now I think the implementation is the next step.”
