Readers put parks and libraries top among 17 fixes for New York City

The New York Times invited readers to vote on 17 proposals for improving New York City as the administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani begins, and the clear winner was a suggestion to devote more resources to parks and libraries. That idea received about 35,000 up votes and called attention to support for those services beyond the roughly 2 percent of the city’s budget now spent on them.

Second on the list was repairing the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and third was building more mental health crisis centers, signaling concern for both aging infrastructure and vulnerable residents. Commenters frequently criticized the exercise’s lack of budgets and timelines, noted ongoing problems with sidewalk scaffolding and complained about noise pollution; many also highlighted subway inaccessibility, while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is planning to install elevators at 95 percent of stations only by the middle of the century.

The lowest-ranked proposal was a $400 million redesign of Fifth Avenue, an earmark from the Adams administration first proposed during the de Blasio years; the price tag and association with a former mayor may have affected its standing. Voters placed spongy coastlines, reining in City Hall bureaucracy and clean, safe public pay toilets among other top choices.

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Key Topics

Politics, Zohran Mamdani, Parks, Public Libraries, Brooklyn-queens Expressway, Mental Health Centers