How to Clean Up San Francisco’s Dirty Streets

24 08 2011

My previous blog post discussed Travel and Leisure’s recent list of America’s Dirtiest Cities.  As I stated at the beginning of that post, I have found San Francisco to be quite dirty with trash and litter in comparison with my previous hometown of Toronto.  While a lot of San Francisco is quite clean, there are definitely large sections that are downright filthy.  While I don’t want to complain about the city’s litter problems, I do want to offer a couple of ideas that I believe could greatly decrease the trash on San Francisco’s streets.  Below is a list of these ideas.  Some of them are more concrete, easy to execute ideas whereas other ones may require more thinking:

  • The public trash cans throughout San Francisco are far too open.  Homeless people can easily sift through the trash in these garbage cans and often end up throwing up a lot of the trash on the ground.  Additionally, if the trash can is full, the wind can easily blow the trash out of the can and into the street and side walk around the can.  The trash cans should be changed to a trash can that must be opened to deposit trash (similar to trash cans you would find at food courts).  In Toronto, for instance, many of the public trash cans would require you to step on a lever to open the top and deposit the trash.  Even when opened, it is difficult to reach into the trash, which would stop the problem of homeless people sifting through the trash and throwing the garbage on the streets.
  • Increase the fines on littering to something very high ($1000?).  This may sound extreme, but it will certainly make just about everyone to think twice about littering.
  • Incent those who pick up garbage on the street.  People get a small amount of change whenever they deposit an empty can or bottle.  Perhaps we could the same with garbage.  For instance, for each full bag of trash someone picks up and deposits to the San Francisco Garbage Collection Services, they would get $5.  While this would cost the city extra money, it could be offset by less need for street cleaners if it turned out to be a successful program.  The only potential issue is that people could abuse the system by simply taking trash from a garbage can to fill up a bag.
  • Give out fines for anyone who leaves out unsecured garbage or recycling to be picked up by garbage collection.  This garbage or recycling needs to either be in a closed bin or tied down so it will not blow away.

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More People Living Downtown = A Less Lively Downtown?

19 07 2011

A poster on the SkyscraperPage forum recently presented the idea that as more people move to the downtown of major cities, these downtown areas actually become less lively than before.  While this sounds completely illogical (you would assume that the more residents in an area, the more lively it would feel), he (and several other posters in the forum topic) do present some solid arguments.  Perhaps the number one argument to this idea is that residents require a quieter space to live.  While any major city downtown is not going to ever be the quietest place to live, residents of any area do demand (and to a degree, require) some sort of peace of quiet where they live.  What this means is that while a downtown area will never be void of livelihood, it is very likely that the noisier, more active areas of a downtown will become very disjointed from the quieter, more residential areas of the downtown.  And this, in the end, is actually a very rational argument.

You can see the full forum topic here


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Neighbourhood Revitilization: A Success Story or a Story of Displacement?

2 07 2011

First of all, let me start off by saying that anything here is strictly my opinion and nothing more.  But I do believe there is a lot of truth in what I have to say.

Just about any city has at least one neighbourhood revitilization success story in the last couple of decades.  We’ve all heard it before: a once downtrodden neighbourhood has been transformed into a lively an energetic and livable neighbourhood.  It certainly sounds like a great thing.  For instance, here in San Francisco, SOMA continues to becomes one of the most livable areas in all of the city as it’s gentrification continues to spread west throughout the neighbourhood.  Similarly, in my former city of Toronto, the King West corridor has become one of the most desirable areas to live.  Just 15 years ago, this was not the case at all.

I will certainly admit that both SOMA in San Francisco and the King West corridor in Toronto are far more pleasant, safe and exciting than they were in the past.  But there is a side effect from all this change: the residential and commercial prices move up (and generally at a rapid rate).  No doubt, it’s perfectly normal for a desirable neighbourhood to cost more to live in or to own a business in than one that’s not so desirable.  Yet, when a neighbourhood often gets ‘revitalized’, the dynamic in that neighbourhood changes.  In the end, the people that lived in the neighbourhood at the start of this revitalization are not same as the ones at the end.  It’s another story of the rich displacing the poor.

With an ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor in many developed countries, this appears to be yet another situation in which those that cannot keep up economically truly lose.  While one would want to believe that these types of changes in a neighbourhood would result in a place that is more livable for everyone, this is almost always not the case.  And while I’ve brought up displacement due to money, I haven’t even touched on the displacement that sometimes happens due to demolition and new construction (most recently, for ‘luxury’ townhomes or condominiums).  There are many ways in which these people are being ‘exiled’ from these neighbourhoods, not just one.

In the end, this problem is one that can often lead to more harm than good.  Recently, many of these gentrified neighbourhoods have been located within the inner area of a city.  This often provides it’s residents with more access to jobs or services they may need.  But frequently, they get displaced to somewhere much farther away without these same jobs or services.  And while this problem of displacement is certainly one that is not going to go away (especially as more and more people move into the city), it is one that doesn’t have to to exist.  And I truly believe we can have it both ways: safe, livable neighbourhoods that are open to everyone.


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The Complete Dominance of Amazon or an Opportunity for Independent Bookstores

17 05 2011

Having recently moved to San Francisco, I was absolutely appalled to find out that pretty much every single major bookstore in the city had closed within the last year or was in the process of closing.  Coming from downtown Toronto, which had a plethora of major book stores within the downtown alone, it was sad to come to a city that had been utterly massacred by online book chains and digital reading.  I am generally very pro-technology, but this is one consequence of digitizing everything.

Bookstores are so much more than stores.  More than almost any other place of retial, they have a real sense of community and allow you to truly escape.  They were also the only type of stores that I didn’t feel pressured to buy anything after spending more than 15 minutes inside.  Yet, with the digitization of books and Amazon continuing to expand, it seems to be a sad reality that what has happened in San Francisco could very well happen elsewhere.  There are a couple of things, however, that an online book retailer and the digitization of books can’t fully replace:

  • the communal aspect of bricks and mortar bookstores.
  • being able to discuss your favorite books and get recommendations from helpful staff face to face.
  • the ability to browse and read any part of a book without purchasing the book first.  Sorry Amazon, but allowing you to read one chapter before purchasing the book doesn’t cut it at all.
  • the fact that books aren’t easily breakable and typically more portable.  When you are out travelling and backpacking, can you honestly say it’s much easier to have your IPad or Kindle out with you or an easy to read travel guide.
  • the big coffee table books.  Unless the Kindle and IPad suddenly double or triple in size, they can never replace these oversized books.
  • the idea of curling up with a good book.

After doing some research, I found that there was a lot of other people who feel the same way about what has happened in San Francisco.  Ultimately, despite the hate some people may have had for Borders or Barnes and Noble for putting independent book stores out of business, having no book stores is far worse than only having the big chains.  Yet, I found an interesting post courtesy of Paul Carr at Tech Crunch entitled Books Without Borders: A Victory For Amazon, But Also For Independent Book Stores which suggests that the downsizing of both Borders and Barnes and Noble is actually a great opportunity for independent bookstores.  The post mentions the situation in San Francisco and discusses the idea that independent book stores can once again thrive by focusing on the shortcomings of online book retailers and digital books.  While the pessimistic side of me thinks the Paul may be a little to optimistic, it does make me to know that others believe there is hope.


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San Francisco: First Impressions

25 04 2011

Well, it’s been exactly a month since my last post.  Things have been incredibly busy for a number of different reasons, but perhaps the main reason is my recent move from Toronto to San Francisco.  And as you may expect, I am excited by the chance to live in a new urban environment complete with it’s merits and it’s faults.

Obviously, I came to San Francisco knowing that it’s incredibly expensive, has a huge homeless problem and is quite dirty in areas.  And to be certain, all of these are definitely true.  But there are so many things that make it one of the most desirable cities to live in.  There are very few other cities that can boast such a beautiful natural surrounding.  The city has also done an amazing job integrating it’s history into the present.  And most of all, the city is truly beautiful and boasts a certain energy that you can’t find almost anywhere else.

But I thought i’d mention some things you may not know about the city.  Below are some random thoughts (both positive and negative):

  • The downtown area caters mainly to the 9 to 5 crowd and to tourists.  Toronto (my former hometown) had a downtown that was far more convenient to anyone living there.
  • The city has a very extreme class division.  More than any i’ve ever seen in any other city i’ve lived in.
  • San Francisco is truly a city of distinct and fantastic neighbourhoods.
  • There are more pedestrian laneways and streets than i’ve seen in any city in North America.
  • Despite being a very green city transit wise, San Francisco still has a horrible traffic problem.

So there you go, some of my first thoughts about the city after living here for a week.  And while these are merely my first impressions and do not hold any real weight given that i’ve only lived here for a week now, I am certain that the longer I live in the city, the better I will understand the urban fabric that makes this city so unique.


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Museums Need Permanent Exhibits

24 03 2011

Recently, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum in Seattle closed it’s doors on several of the museum’s most permanent exhibits: the Experience Music Project’s Northwest Passage Exhibit and the Science Fiction Museum’s main galleries featuring the Fantastic Voyages exhibit, Homeworld exhibit and the Brave New World exhibit.  Each of these more general permanent exhibits are being replaced by far more specific and temporary exhibits detailing the history of Nirvana, props from Battlestar Galactica and a whole area devoted to Avatar the movie.

While i’m a fan of Nirvana and relatively enjoyed Avatar, I don’t quite understand  the need to replace permanent exhibits that provide a museum with a bit of stability with temporary exhibits that may not appeal to as wide of a breadth of people.  The closure of the Northwest Passage in particular makes absolutely no sense.  The Seattle music scene is world famous and this exhibit was a perfect introduction into this exciting music scene.

But this example is not an isolated incident.  Museums are increasingly scrapping the idea of a permanent exhibit for an increasingly for-profit motive of bringing in as many customers as possible.  And in order to do so, this often means replacing ‘aging’ permanent exhibits with more exciting temporary ones.  The problem is that these exhibits tend to be far more specific and can often isolate a large group of museum goers.  More importantly, permanent exhibits provide a real base for a museum.  So while our museums become more and more expensive and more showy, they are increasingly lacking the depth they once had.  Bring back the idea of permanent exhibits.


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Toronto Transit Commission Takes Stance on Whether to Privatize Toronto Public Transit

4 02 2011

For anyone who lives in Toronto and takes the subway fairly regularly, you may have noticed the posters discussing the potential negative outcomes of privatizing Toronto public transit and using Vancouver, Melbourne and London and examples of why not to privatize public transit in Toronto.   You can read the full story in the Toronto Sun article entitled ‘Keep TTC public‘ about the 1/2 million dollar campaign by the TTC to make people aware of why the TTC shouldn’t be privatized.

Well now, it’s time for my rant…

Having moved to Toronto nearly four years ago, I can truly say that the TTC is the worst public transit system I have dealt with.  The ticket prices are astronomical (the price of a monthly pass is double that of Boston’s for example), the staff is extremely overpaid, rude and generally quite lazy, and the coverage for a city of Toronto’s size is abysmal.  On top of this, the subway stations are generally dirty and all of the subways and streetcars are old and regularly broken.  The fact that there has been so many problems trying to get the light rail projects off the ground highlight the TTC’s inefficiencies.

What I find most insulting is the fact that they bring up Melbourne’s public transit system as an example of why privatization does not work.  Most people in Toronto have not likely lived in Melbourne nor have they visited it.  Having lived in Melbourne back in 2006, I can set the record straight that Melbourne’s public transit system is a huge step up from Toronto’s.  The coverage of the transit system is incredible (whereas Toronto has 3 subway lines, Melbourne has more than a dozen).  The prices are reasonable and the trains, trams and buses are both efficient and clean.

So what can I conclude from all this?  Well if Melbourne really is an example of what happens when you privatize a public transit system, then I believe Toronto’s TTC should be privatized as soon as possible.  So thank you Toronto Transit Commission for helping me realize what the right thing truly is to do.


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The Fate of Ontario Place

10 11 2010

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Canuck with a camera

 

Most adult Toronto residents view Ontario Place with a true sense of nostalgia.    Over the course of several decades, the inner city theme park delighted visitors with it’s water park, IMAX movies and beautiful lake side views.  However, over the last 5 to 10 years, Ontario Place has begun to lost some of it’s lustre.  Despite decent attendance on the weekends, Ontario Place can often be quite empty throughout the week.   Recently, according to this Toronto Star article, the Provincial Crown corporation has started to look at overhauling the entire Ontario Place complex.  The extremely unfortunate thing is that this may mean that all the buildings currently on the Ontario Place property may be torn down.

The Provincial Crown corporation is looking for ideas to redevelop the site and are hoping to make a decision by 2011.   I have heard rumours of such developments as a high end condo complex and a hotel to accommodate all the convention goers at Exhibition Place.  However, it seems quite alarming (and disheartening) that the idea of simply improving the amusement park hasn’t been considered.  There are many buildings on the site already that are considered an icon of Toronto and to destroy all these buildings seem like a somewhat ludicrous thing to do.    Thus, it seems to make more sense that if they want to make better use of the space, they simply need to improve what they already have.

Ontario Place is an extremely popular spot for families and provides Toronto with a central amusement park for everyone to enjoy.  It is also a cheaper alternative to the overpriced Canada’s Wonderland outside of Toronto.   And it seems that there is a growing community who want to make sure that site of Ontario Place continues to be a place for everyone to enjoy.  I have already found (and joined) a Facebook group entitled ‘Save Ontario Place‘ and I urge those who don’t want to lose this important piece of Toronto to join.  And while I am intrigued to hear all the different proposals, I truly believe the best one is one that improves what is already there and not one that takes away a true piece of Toronto history.


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How to fix the American housing system

27 10 2010

I came across this Cyburbia forum post which offers several suggestions (some rather radical) on how to fix the current American housing system and the in-affordability and risks associated with it.    As a Canadian, I definitely enjoyed the first suggestion of mirroring our Canadian housing system which limits risk.  While our housing system is far from perfect, the percentage of foreclosures over the past two years is certainly much much lower than in the United States.   Although the rest of the conversation degrades throughout the post, it is refreshing to hear several different well thought out and honest suggestions.  Do I think any of the suggestions have any chance of actually coming true?  Probably not, but it’s not without possibility.  If you’re too lazy to click on the link, i’ve listed the different suggestions below:

1) Mirror the Canadian system

2) Nationalize the mortgage subsidy system

3) Re-examine securitization

4) Limit debt of one home purchase per person

5) Focus on financing landlords rather than homeowners


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Arcade Fire Presents the Suburbs

21 09 2010

I am a big music junkie and listen to a wide variety of music.  But I have to admit that the Arcade Fire probably rank as one of my favorite, if not my favorite band.   Their most recent release, The Suburbs is not only a stellar album, but also provides some incredible depth on suburbia as well as the state of the current modern world.   The sixteen songs on The Suburbs depict the suburban sprawl not only as a poor planning choice but also as a place of nostalgia where many of our current 20 and 30 year old’s grew up.  Despite all this, I was still shocked to see that the San Francisco based planning blog ‘SPUR’ wrote a post regarding this new Arcade Fire album.  The post covers the album in great depth and certainly made me dig deeper into the lyrical content of the album.  Anyways, if you are at all a fan of good music or are interested in hearing an album that portrays the suburban life so well, I recommend checking out Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’.

You can purchase the album here.


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