Time to clean up Vancouver?

[jlousa]

I think there is a certain lack of civic pride, look no further than last years riots. There seems to be currently a critical mass of people that don't care at all about the city, this seems to have lead to cause a majority that don't care enough to do anything about it and hence the downward spiral.

History has shown us in other cities that this is reversible though it just takes leadership and commitment. It needs to start with the youth, have elementary school kids under teacher supervision clean up the areas around their schools, and continue it thru high school. This develops a sense of civic ownership, and discouragement towards littering. The city certainly needs to step up as well, the reduction of the graffiti removal program under the current administration was a failure and has only recently been reinstated but a lot of damage was already done.

There are a few items that might require large funds to fix but they would have a large impact. Like Metro-One stated riding the train into the city you get bombarded with graffiti and garbage dumping which by the time you arrive into the core you've lost whatever pride you've had and you're suffering from apathy. Imagine if all the graffiti was gone along the Grandview cut though and the train retaining wall was covered with a living wall. Imagine if once you got downtown there were a few more garbage cans around and that they weren't overflowing but actually picked up repeatedly throughout the day.