If you live in downtown Manhattan, the odor never goes away. You rise in the morning, open a window, and it's there. You go for the newspapers, coffee, a bagel, or hurry off to the subways, and it's there. It's there at night when you fall into bed. It will be there for the next mayor, too, sifting remorselessly into the offices of City Hall.

That sickening odor is a mixture of molten steel, pulverized concrete, smoldering carpets, paper and wood. Along with burning remnants of flesh and blood. The odor might be poisonous; few people in downtown believe the assurances of any government official. Those with small children can't risk the health of young lives on the basis of optimistic handouts. Many are moving on.

The next mayor of New York can't move on. He will live with that sickening odor, placed in the New York air by murderous religious fanatics. And that is a good thing in a bad time. The Yankees, in giddy triumph or valiant defeat, will not remove the odor. Only the construction workers can do that, and they will be working at The Site through the longest, hardest winter in many New York generations.

Aid to Remembering

We hope we've seen the worst from these God-sick killers, hope that anthrax will be contained, and smallpox kept caged. But the next mayor can never forget what has been done to us already. The odor rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center will be a daily aid to remembering.

It should remind him — Mark Green or Mike Bloomberg — of the valiant hours and days immediately after the attack that took so many lives. New Yorkers did not need a mayor to instruct them in how to behave. They behaved with uncommon stoicism. On that day, they were joined together in extraordinary ways, the size of the calamity dwarfing all petty distinctions of race, ethnicity or politics.

Mayor Giuliani then did a superb job of managing the spirit that was already there. Some of that unity has been eroded by time, by the normal irritations of the city. Too much of it has been broken by the sheer nastiness of the last weeks of the mayoral campaign.

After the short, vile Bloomberg-Green campaign, neither man can be a winner whose hands are innocent of mud. The tone of their attack commercials was cheap and vulgar. Innuendo dripped, distortion ruled. There wasn't a sentence of eloquence. Not a word came close to expressing the enormity of what has happened to us. Both candidates inadvertently urged their viewers to hurl objects at the TV screens.

The challenge to the winner is now simple: To get beyond politics, as swiftly as possible, and start governing.

That doesn't mean governing from the top, barking orders to cowed underlings. The next mayor simply can't be a one-man band. He must form what is essentially a wartime coalition government (in contrast to the Bush administration), made up of liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. All must share one dominating attitude: Governing, in this crisis, also means listening.

The mayor must listen to businessmen and women, drawing from them precise arguments for what must be done in the short run — and the long. They should be pressed to devise concrete plans for rebuilding, including the fierce problem of how to finance these projects. The businesspeople should be specific about the urgent need to spread some business facilities around the five boroughs. And they should anticipate the needs of businesses 10 or 20 years from now.

In their offerings to the mayor, they could deal with specific issues (office space, transportation) and general issues (the quality of public education). But they must be quick, and persuasive. The clock is ticking.

Mayor Must Listen

This immense effort can't be left only to businesspeople. The mayor — if he is properly humble — must also listen to those New Yorkers who make the city a unique artistic and intellectual capital. An American city. A world city. The future City of New York must first be imagined, before it is given exuberant life. That requires listening to those whose basic work is to imagine.

These could include New York-based filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, William Goldman, Mike Nichols, to mention only a few. They could include novelists E.L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer, Junot Diaz, Louis Auchincloss, Oscar Hijuelos, among many.

The mayor must find time for poets and artists, historians and professors, museum directors and musicians, along with our architects and urban planners. Talk to them. Listen to them. Challenge them.

The challenge is simple: To imagine two cities. The city in which they'd like to live next year, and the city they want for their grandchildren, and ours.

The next mayor would be a fool to ignore such people. Each, in his or her own way, knows more about New York than any politician. If the mayor listens carefully, he could push their ideas — from the utopian to the practical — up against the more conventional thinking of businesspeople and policy wonks. Each group would stimulate the other. The results could be exhilarating.

Amazing People

Above all, the next mayor must listen to ordinary New Yorkers. They live here. Most want to stay here. They, too, imagine that future New York. We've seen over and over again that the person on the factory floor has a much better sense about ways to improve the process of work than any CEO.

The same is true of those New Yorkers who have chosen to stay here, working each day, raising children, dreaming a future. The city needs every single one of those amazing people. So does the mayor.

Armed with fresh, concrete ideas, the next mayor can go to the new reconstruction authority and make the strongest possible case for our wounded city. He can present ideas that are as sparkling and innovative as New York is at its best. He will need the support of the governor, our two senators, the congressional delegation. He will need to forge an alliance with the new City Council. He will have to remind the dogmatic anti-New Yorkers in Congress that for several generations New Yorkers have paid far more into the U.S. Treasury in taxes than we have ever received in federal benefits. Now we must have our own money.

Tomorrow, the city chooses. Green or Bloomberg. For a few days later this week, there will be the usual petty charges and countercharges, but then it will be time to start making the new New York. The clock ticks urgently. The odor of death still stains our autumn air.