Hyperindividualism and car culture explains it all. Americans don’t trust each other (especially not their neighbors) and want to put as much distance between themselves as possible. We’re also mostly NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) and have very strict zoning laws that prevent commercial and residential buildings from coexisting in the same area. This is great for the auto industry because it means you can’t do anything without driving, and they lobby the government to block any attempt to change things.
Our suburbs are liminal spaces that more closely resemble purgatory than actual communities, which is why everyone who grew up in them is at least slightly insane.
If NYC uses ranked choice voting in the general as well and Cuomo learns from his disaster of a campaign then he might try coalition-building with Eric Adams or others to pull off a win by getting neoliberals and MAGA to gang up on Zohran. It’s a headscratcher for me because I never expect neoliberals to learn from their mistakes, and yet they might actually feel forced to because they never fail to pull out all the stops against progressives, let alone an actual socialist.