This city loves preaching self-improvement every January while ignoring the decay, chaos, and hypocrisy punching residents in the face daily. Here’s what has to change first.
New York is addicted to New Year’s resolutions. This city treats January like a magic cleanse even though nothing in this place has been washed properly since the Koch administration. Every year, we watch people talk about “new chapters” while standing in the same chaos they swore they’d escape last year. Gyms fill up, bookstores sell out of motivational paperbacks, and everyone promises to reinvent themselves. Cute. But let’s start with the part nobody says out loud.
New Yorkers shouldn’t be making resolutions until the city stops acting like a malfunctioning amusement ride built in the seventies and never repaired again. You want real improvement? Here are ten things New York needs to fix before anyone tries to fix themselves.
The sidewalks need to stop ambushing people
Walking in this city shouldn’t feel like dodging landmines. The cracks are deep enough to swallow toddlers. The loose tiles could double as weapons. The tree roots are running a coup. Before anyone commits to “walk more,” maybe ensure our feet survive a block without a workplace injury report.
The subway has to work at least once without a meltdown
We get lectured about “showing up on time,” meanwhile the MTA runs the emotional schedule of someone going through a midlife crisis. Delays. Track fires. “Police activity.” Every excuse under the sun except the truth: the system is old and the people in charge treat it like a suggestion. Don’t talk to us about punctuality while we’re stuck in a tunnel listening to a conductor sigh into the microphone.
Safety needs to stop being a political prop
You’ve got one side screaming the city is a lawless wasteland, and the other saying it’s a utopia sprinkled with fairy dust. Real New Yorkers know it’s neither. We just want kids to get home without drama. We want subways that don’t feel like mood roulette. We want parks that feel like parks. Before anyone vows to “spend more time outdoors,” the city should make the outdoors feel like less of a gamble.
Neighborhood culture can’t keep getting bulldozed
Every time a beloved local shop closes, another chain pretending to be “authentic” slides in. The soul leak is real. Block by block, New York is being engineered for tourists and executives instead of the people who built the character. You can’t tell residents to “shop local” while approving leases that evict every local spot worth saving.
Housing needs to be something other than a punishment
People are paying luxury prices to live inside apartments smaller than a delivery truck. “Affordable housing” means a closet with a sink. Resolutions about cooking more or getting organized fall apart immediately when your kitchen is the size of a laptop and your storage is the floor.
Nightlife needs oxygen, not handcuffs
The city acts shocked when young people say New York “lost its edge,” as if it hasn’t spent a decade treating nightlife like a public enemy. New York’s cultural energy comes from late nights, loud rooms, and places where strangers collide. Stop choking the one thing that keeps this place from turning into a museum gift shop.
Sanitation must stop operating like it’s optional
The garbage bags, the rats, the dripping mystery liquids. We live in a city that wants to be taken seriously as a global capital but still handles trash like a college dorm. If you want residents to “live cleaner,” start with the streets. It’s hard to feel inspired when the sidewalk smells like boiled despair.
Hospitality workers deserve respect that isn’t seasonal
Restaurants and bars keep this city stitched together. The workers are the unofficial therapists, referees, and damage-control crew for millions. Yet they’re underpaid, overworked, and treated like punching bags by stressed-out customers. Before New Yorkers resolve to “be kinder,” the city itself should stop treating the industry like background noise.
Creative spaces need protection or the city will become unrecognizable
Artists built the myth of New York. They gave it flavor, tension, electricity. Now they can’t afford to exist here. The stages are gone, the galleries fold, the rehearsal rooms get turned into storage for a bank. You can’t tell people to “embrace creativity” while simultaneously exiling the creatives.
The red tape around new ideas is a death sentence
Entrepreneurs try to start something fresh and immediately get buried under conflicting rules, agencies that don’t talk to each other, fees, fines, and paperwork that feels like a prank. The city claims it wants innovation, then treats innovators like they’re smuggling fireworks. Before anyone resolves to “start a project,” the city should stop punishing the people actually trying.
And here’s where the inspirational quote would normally go, but let’s be adults. New Yorkers aren’t stupid. We don’t need slogans. We don’t need speeches. We don’t need some airy promise about “believing in ourselves.” We need a city that stops dragging its residents like an anchor tied to their ankle.
A real resolution for New York looks like this: stop making life harder than it has to be. Stop losing the plot. Stop mistaking noise for progress. Start acting like the city everyone brags about instead of the city everyone is quietly exhausted by.
If New York ever gets its side of the street together, then we can talk about gym memberships and habit trackers and hydration goals.
Until then, the only resolution that matters is simple: survive the city long enough to demand something better.
By Marco Shalma
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