Obviously NYC is very big and very wealthy. But the powers of a Mayor depend on the city.

I'm not a New Yorker, but here's how I understand it: NYC mayor appoints a bunch of people who run various bureaucratic legs of the city government. The guys who manage taxes, zoning, and whatnot. But the Mayor has to get those people approved by the city council. The mayor can also veto policies written by the city council, but he can be overruled with a two-thirds vote by the council. The council writes the budget, and the Mayor can only approve it or veto it.

This all sounds pretty normal, but it actually varies a lot depending on the city. In Chicago, for example, the Mayor writes the budget, instead of the council. But, the Aldermen (a Chicago city council member is called an Alderman btw) have a lot more power downstream of the budget, since they control stuff like zoning within their respective wards. The Aldermen also redraw their own political boundaries every 10 years, with no input from the Mayor whatsoever. I guess I'd say Chicago's mayor has less "first-order" power but more "second-order" power compared to NYC's mayor. Chicago is weird.

What should you make of this? I'm not sure. Maybe Mayors in Europe or Asia have way more power than Mamdani does, I don't know. I reckon that NYC mayor has more power than most American mayors, even when you ignore the differences in scale.