I live in mid sized Finnish city with about 60 000 people (Seinäjoki) and library (built ~10 years ago) is one of those things you never hear people talking bad

I live in mid sized Finnish city with about 60 000 people (Seinäjoki) and library (built ~10 years ago) is one of those things you never hear people talking bad about. If I remember correctly our library served as an example when designing Oodi library in Helsinki since it portraits a "new library style" municipalities are reaching for. The goal was to get people to stay there instead of just fetching the article they were looking for. I think they achieved this since no matter when you visit the place is backed with teens reading and discussing about some manga or comics, elderly reading newspapers from around the country, poetry reading groups and so on. Since I mainly consume my literature via outlets like HN, I use the library primarily to get books for my young kids. Even those facilities are great, there is a play area with tunnels and holes in the walls where kids can read in solitude, isolated reading "enclosures" where groups of kids can flock to when some adult reads for them and lots of other neat details. They even film some kid shows in there and the last time I visited I found out they have a good catalogue of new console games you could borrow! This might have sounded like an advertisement but the point I was trying to make is that if someone would ask me what is the best thing our city has accomplished with our tax money, my answer would be "our library". And as everything is digital nowadays, making an effort to get people off their phones to socialize and use narrative in its original form doesn't hurt either.