As a Dutch chauvinist, I beg to differ. We generally take excellent care of public places. This is a combo of culture and government services actually cleaning stuff up every once in a while. Of course, this is HN, so cue some replies about horrible stinky places in the Netherlands, but as a general rule I stand by this. SF is a pile of poo compared to an average Dutch city.
And then I haven't even mentioned Luxembourg. That entire country is so clean and tidy that it almost looks like a cartoon.
>We generally take excellent care of public places. This is a combo of culture and government services actually cleaning stuff up every once in a while.
Ok, I've gotta take issue with this.
Dutch people litter. All the time. People rarely seem to clean up after their dogs. People place their trash bags out on the curb (where there aren't underground bins) far earlier than they should, resulting in trash-strewn streets and fat, obnoxious seagulls. It's a mess. Beer cans left on bridges and park benches. Energy drink cans tossed to the side. Cigarette butts strewn carelessly. Firework refuse absolutely fucking everywhere a few weeks either side of New Years. Bikes left as litter.
There's always someone who comes along with a street vacuum, or a team of people going along with bags and pickers. It seems to me that people have little respect for not littering because it's always someone else's problem, and there's always going to be someone cleaning up after you.
So if by "we" take care of public spaces you mean "lots of people get paid to clean up others' carelessness," sure, but in six years I've seen little to suggest that not leaving trash just anywhere is strong tenent of Dutch culture.
My hunch is that urban areas of the NL are essentially all developed and man-made, in that every street, sidewalk, tree, bush, patch of grass is planned and raw, untouched nature is relatively less accessible and visible. Therefore people perceive this urban "fabrication" with its attendant cleaning staff as less precious, less worth keeping clean than some primeval forest or national park.
I could be wrong, of course, and this is all just my own perception. But I really fail to recognize the cultural cleanliness that you say embodies the Dutch.
Last time I was in Amsterdam the people who clean up the metro stations were on strike. I didn't know this and I was thinking, "Wow! I really expected things to be cleaner than this." It was quite a mess the whole week I was there. That said, away from the stations things seemed very well kept.
It's not true, though. SF is pretty much average in this regard.
Americans in general just don't seem to care about public spaces, pretty much anywhere in the country. I've travelled to many US cities and the only reason other cities some how feel "cleaner" is because there's literally nobody walking in them.
The cities made for walking (like NYC and maybe Boston) are on par with SF. Maybe less dog poo everywhere though.
This reminds me of my earlier experiences walking around LA. My natural instinct looking at the state of disarray in some of the streets was that I was on the wrong side of town, because where I come from (Granada, Spain) that's what you notice when you venture into the slummy areas. In LA, however, you need to readjust your gauge, as this was a fairly safe area, just not well taken care of.
SF has an extreme homelessness problem, smells like urine in upscale pedestrian magnet areas (not just back-alleys) and the residential buildings are poorly maintained to the point it being visually distracting because the land underneath them is so much more valuable than the edifices themselves.
NYC is better, but still fairly grungy. Boston is substantially better along these metrics. Montreal and Quebec city, two of the oldest and, by dint of age, pedestrian-friendly cities on the continent, are leagues ahead of SF as well in this respect.
SF is great. Love the vibe. But lets not kid ourselves into thinking it is clean.
There are other places yes but out of the countries I've visited, the US is definitely one of the worst. All the Europe I've visited (Paris, Berlin, Zurich, Istanbul, south-eastern region of Russia) has been about as well kept as Australia, my home country. Aside from Malaysia, I can't think of a country that's worse than the US. Even the (disclaimer: nicer, less impoverished) parts of Mexico I've visited were arguably better maintained.
Another disclaimer: I live in the Bay Area and that's where most (but not all) of my feelings about US public spaces come from.
The Bay Area is bad even by American standards. But the places I've been in America do tend to be rather shabby in comparison to places I've visited abroad, in general.
Lol what? In Berlin you see heaps of trash, broken furniture and fridges on the sidewalks once you leave the main roads. The city stinks in the summer (guess this is due to not enough water in the sewage). In Neukölln (and other parts of the city) you gotta take care of druggies everywhere. Parts of the city have a severe neonazi problem (left-wing and "foreign looking" people are getting beaten up, and their cars torched). Rents are skyrocketing and the government doesn't care much except to fight those who protest against gentrification.
IMHO, Paris is fairly dirty (like 60% San Francisco dirty). Especially the subway is a mess, and there is no law enforcement (e.g. minor children begging during weekday and no-one does anything). Many of the trains are vandalized.
St. Petersburg is much nicer than Paris (at least in the summer). Surprisingly, the it is cleaner even though the country is poorer.
It might be the large US population of homeless people worsens this (especially in the bay area), as they have no better option than to leave their waste in public places.
Years ago I travelled through norcal without stopping in to SF. Started in Crescent City, traversed into Oregon, past Shasta region and the farthest south I achieved was to Santa Rosa. Headed east to Oroville and then back to Crescent City to catch my prop flight to SF for the flight east.
Wonderful personal trip on the winding mountain roads and experiencing the abrupt climate|vista changes in an hour+ from pacific coast to desert. Morning 50 degrees, afternoon 80+.
It was my first time in norcal and the thing that shocked me the most (reading my emails to friends from that time) was the filth, poverty and mental illness in the towns and cities.
The US is a big place, which averages away the extremes. In San Francisco, population 868k, there are about 10-12k homeless folks (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-homeless...), which puts it at over 1% homelessness. That's a tragic number for such a wealthy city.
It's only a tragic reflection on the city if you assume all the homeless are born and raised there. How many of those migrated there from colder climates? How many were given a bus ticket by their home city and sent there?
SF spends an absolute fortune on homeless people. That, coupled with its temperate climate, makes it a magnet for many types of homeless people.
Correct, but I have never seen such concentration of homeless people anywhere in Spain, where climate varies significantly as well, and economic conditions are historically harsher. But there's a safety net that prevents most people from falling all the way down.
Not certain how you can describe all of Europe that way. In my experience, European countries have very good upkeep of public spaces even by higher developed world standards, and especially compared to the US.
I'm not sure about littering/pissing/etc, but as an American, I'm constantly surprised by the amount of graffiti when I go to Europe. It far outstrips what I see here.
As a Californian, of course, they have far fewer homeless people there :)
Sweden and the UK seem roughly the same to me. The main streets of large cities are perhaps a bit dirtier in England, but the parks in Sweden are far worse when people leave all their trash for the bottle collector (not just the bottles).
As a person who grew up in Britain and now live in Sweden in cities with a comparable population size, I disagree.
London is an exception when it comes to the UK, there is a lot more investment in public services and it's not a true representation of Britain due to its multicultural component.
Sure, London has a level of investment in public services which is unrepresentative of Britain as a whole (though they also pay most of the taxes that fund public services.) But all big cities (and many small ones) are multicultural.
London is more multicultural than the rest of Britain.
even if you count the duo-culture the rest of britain has (Pakistani is usually what people refer to when defining "multi-cultural" in the greater context of the UK) then London is still absolutely outclassing everything else by an amazingly wide margin in terms of multi-culturalism.
You could argue the Polish influx has created a tri-culture, but really, I lived in London and my neighbors were Russian, Estonian, Finnish, Canadian, South African, Eritrean, Saudi, Indian, Danish, Italian, Brazillian and there was even a girl from Zimbabwe. Nothing like where I came from.. That's a true multi-culture.
Regardless, as a person having lived in 2 comparable places in different countries I see a huge difference in the way public spaces are treated (to the benefit of Sweden). I don't doubt that the parent has similar experiences as I wasn't saying it's uncommon. But I have this opinion having actual experience. If you do not have similar experience you are not an authority to tell me how things are.
I'm not sure what point you were even trying to make, that Britain has more than just British culture therefore my argument has no ground? :S
And then I haven't even mentioned Luxembourg. That entire country is so clean and tidy that it almost looks like a cartoon.