What gift would you wish on your city for the 2004? We asked our readers and they said:

Pittsburgh's mayor Tom Murphy is hellbent on building an upscale shopping district downtown. My gift to Pittsburgh would be for him to concentrate his efforts on promoting ethnic neighborhoods instead. Pittsburgh has a long industrial history that includes many European immigrants. Now it's universities and high-tech industries that are bringing large influxes of Asians and Middle-Easterners. The city should celebrate this diversity and use it to create vibrant urban areas that can attract and retain young people once they graduate from school.

Michael Rainey, Pittsburgh

The willingness of leaders to identify the top 3 issues that need concerted attention and investment, and the selfless fortitude to target substantial investment to make a real difference in those areas.

Julie Ralston [no city given]

I'd given my section of Pittsburgh's Schenley Heights area a few public trash cans. As it is, all the high school students that walk by my house on their way to and from Schenley High School litter my street with their candy wrappers, beverage cans/bottles (at least most of these are plastic!), snack food bags, etc. It's a never-ending war, but I win each battle when I pick up their trash myself (even separating the trash from the recyclables), though my lower back might disagree with me on occasion.

Harold Kyriazi, Pittsburgh

I would give Cleveland a winning football team and more young people moving into the lofts in the Warehouse District.

David Benesh, San Francisco

My gift to both my residential city of Lakewood, Ohio, and the city of my work, Cleveland, Ohio, would be the Council-Manager form of government. Not only would it bring professionalism to government which is desperately needed, the form facilitates a more functional politics.

Dr. Larry Keller, Professor of Public Administration, Cleveland State University

I wish that the powers to be in the city/county/state governmental agencies realize the importance of funding neighborhood/community development groups for the good work they have done and continue to do.

Becky Rogers, Pittsburgh

A more thorough rail transit system, serving all the disparate corners of our city. And a Metro stop by my house!

Stephanie Morey, Los Angeles

An elected Metropolitan Council instead of one appointed by the governor. Since Minnesota is truly a swing state when it comes to electing governors, the present system means no continuity in planning or governing policies.

A transit system redesigned from the bottom up. In the old days, Minneapolis and St. Paul were two separate worlds, and the transit system still reflects this situation. It is very hard to travel between Point A in once city and Point B in the other, because there are really only two lines that provide dependable service across city boundaries. I would also change the transit system as follows:

Stop trying to do everything. Pull back the empty commuter buses that run thirty miles out of town, and use the resources to create a practical transit system for the inner cities and inner ring of suburbs. One to three buses per hour is nothing to brag about. Aim for four buses per hour on all arterial streets, dawn to midnight, seven days a week. This is possible if the MTC stops running buses that exurban residents don't even use. (My former home city Portland, Oregaon, is working toward this goal.)

Make the system-wide schedule publicly available so that a person can actually plan a trip by transit without consulting a frustrating and inaccurate website.

Stop penalizing the most dedicated riders by removing the rush hour surcharge from the fares. Base the fares on distance traveled using a zone system.

Stop running buses on the Nicollet Mall and make it a real pedestrian mall. There are plenty of streets running parallel to it.

Put light rail on the following routes:

• Downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul through the University of Minnesota campus, eventually extending the line from Wayzata to Stillwater
• Two lines running north-south, along roughly the 35-W and 35-E corridors, eventually running from Anoka to Farmington and Forest Lake to Hastings
• A ring line, connecting the airport, the 66th and Lyndale area, downtown Edina, the Excelsior-Grand new urbanist development, the new Golden Valley town center, the old downtown of Robbinsdale, and so on around the entire Twin Cities, connecting all the old or new town centers of the inner suburbs and intersecting with the other lines.

Tear out the big box stores and massive parking lots in Midway and along Lake Street and West Broadway. These have succeeded in making former blighted areas even uglier than before. Rebuild them flush to the sidewalk with parking behind, on the roof, in the basement (heated year round!), or in back. In fact, make it illegal to have parking lots fronting the street in new construction.

Put full-service supermarkets in both downtowns to accommodate the increasing number of full-time residents.

These are my observations after a few months back in my hometown of Minneapolis following 18 years away.

Karen Sandness, Minneapolis/St. Paul

A New Colonist Special Feature