Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked his 100th day in office with a video about how citywide scaffolding has become an acceptable eyesore and what he plans to do to change that reality.
The five-minute, 29-second public service announcement narrated by the mayor and shot by HBO documentarian John Wilson includes interviews with everyday New Yorkers about scaffolding blocking out sun in their neighborhoods and sometimes making them feel less safe.
Mamdani starts the video by conceding that building and maintaining property is necessary for the city — hence the scaffolding many New Yorkers see every day. But it often stays up longer than necessary.
“Scaffolding takes away from the beauty of this city we all love,” he says. “It makes living here feel cramped, claustrophobic, closed in.”
He said there are “countless” scaffolding structures in the city that’ve been in place for at least 15 years.
As part of his solution, Mamdani said he’ll increase fines for scaffolding that’s been in place for more than two years. He also said he will forbid builders from erecting sheds that extend more than 40 feet from the structure those barriers are servicing.
Mamdani’s video winds down with the mayor introducing the host of HBO’s “How to with John Wilson,” who’s filming the video produced by the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York. Wilson shot a 2020 episode of his program focusing on the city’s ubiquitous labyrinths of unsightly scaffolding structures.
Wilson asks Mandani why no one has done anything to get this problem under control until now. The mayor explains that builders often have no incentive to take down and rebuild scaffolding. That’s something he hopes to change.
“I think there are a lot of parts of life in our city that we have just come to accept as if it’s the cost of being a New Yorker or living in New York City when in fact these are political decisions,” the mayor explains. “They’re political choices and we can make different ones.”
