Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The tent is located on a triangle shaped plaza in lower Manhattan, and is made from white tarp and transparent fiber glass. It looks like a venue for an auto show or a rock concert, before you realize the plastic milk crates piled up in front of the tent are actually a makeshift gate arranged to spell out the word "talk."

Inside, it's divided into two parts. The afternoon I visited, it was warm and bright. A few people were typing on tablet computers lined up in the entry space; they were filling in an online survey that asked them how they felt about the public services in their neighborhoods.

Others were posting stickers on the walls of the tent to share their thoughts about the city they call home.

One wall had already been covered with hundreds of such stickers carrying messages like "My salary hasn't gone up in years although my expenses have," and requests like "Kick bad judges off the bench," and declarations like "All people should be happy."

In the inner space, a curtain away, a group of immigration advocates held a discussion on stage. Musicians and dancers performed during intermissions.

All of this reminded me of the "anything goes" months-long Occupy Wall Street demonstration in 2011 at Zuccotti Park. The only differences are that this seems to be a more luxurious encampment with one big roof over everybody's heads and one clear target audience - New York's Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio.

In less than two months, New York will say farewell to the current mayor, 12-year-incumbent Michael Bloomberg, and say hello to De Blasio.

The incoming mayor couldn't be more different from Bloomberg. The former is 6'5", and the latter 5'6". The former is against many policies spearheaded by the latter, from closing underperforming schools to using stop and frisk as a policing tactic. The former won the election by vowing to fix the gap between the rich and the poor and to listen to the people, and the latter is known for wanting to pull more billionaires into the city and to go his own way even if it isn't popular.

Indeed, De Blasio, who, until a month before the primary was still considered an underdog, won that and the main election by quickly building up an image as the "people's mayor."

To be sure, this was not a De Blasio invention. The populist tactic has been tried many times in previous elections. But this time it worked particularly well, thanks to the city's fatigue with Bloomberg's leadership style.

In his 12 years, Bloomberg has done the city a lot of good, from banning smoking in public places to adding hundreds of miles of bike lanes, and creating new parks and outside seating areas across Manhattan. These will no doubt be great legacies. But under the Bloomberg administration, the passage of policies often involved ignoring the opinions of dissenters and trampling on the resistant.

In 2009, when he was about to be turned out of office after two terms, he managed to change the city law to allow himself one more term. It was soon after the financial crisis, and Bloomberg's presence was certainly a calming influence. But this wasn't considered democracy. 

De Blasio owes his victory to this anti-Bloomberg sentiment. And the tent is a stark contrast to that, set up by a group of civic organizations to collect voices of the people for the new mayor.

De Blasio has sent his transition team leaders to visit the tent. And when the tent, which is scheduled to be up for 16 days, is wrapped up on Saturday, the "voices" will be put in a report to give advice to the mayor on what should top the agenda.

It will be interesting to see how such populism will work when De Blasio actually has to run the city. Whatever the criticism of Bloomberg, his CEO background meant he ensured that the city, a complex organism, worked. He may be dictatorial but he was also a supreme manager.

Will De Blasio and his protest-style tent, union support, and softer anti-crime tactics, keep the city operating dynamically and safely?

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com