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  #1  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 10:05 AM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
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Has Your City Become Cleaner or Dirtier in Recent Years?

I live in suburban San Diego, in a pretty good area. But in recent years I've noticed an uptick in rats and mice running around in the streets, and more litter and garbage. I've also seen rodents running around in L.A., S.F., and even Portland and Seattle. Bedbug infestations are a problem in some cities. Maybe some of this is linked to overcrowded and shared apartments (and overflowing garbage bins), and perhaps homeless camps in wooded areas and on the streets. In creek beds not far from where I live, there is a lot of litter. Is your city becoming cleaner or dirtier? Are there any clean cities left, in the U.S. or anywhere else? I read that in Singapore they fine people for littering and spitting. Maybe that is harsh, but many say Singapore is quite clean and sanitary. Most Japanese cities are said to be quite clean, even though they are usually densely populated. Density and cleanliness can coexist apparently.

Last edited by CaliNative; May 17, 2019 at 10:34 AM.
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  #2  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 10:12 AM
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Substitute "or" for "of" in the title. Fat fingers and tired eyes.
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  #3  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 10:37 AM
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When I was growing up London's streets were an absolute mess. Littering, grafitti and dereliction was rampant right until the Millennium.

By the noughties though things started cleaning up with an army of street cleaners thanks to the new mayor Ken Livingstone, the first time the city had had an actual mayor since Maggie Thatcher got rid of the problematic, left leaning position back in the 80s, leaving underfunded local councils to run their own patches without cohesion.

As the streets got cleaner, with more landscaping and tree planting (the city lost millions trees in two hurricanes in 1987 and 1990), behaviour followed - people became less likely to litter and paint the cleaner the street looked. Buidings got cleaned from centuries of blackening coal dust, and just generallly making the public realm more agreeable - crime fell and even birthrates went up. These are the intangible immeasurable effects of having inviting public spaces, and one of the reasons why Paris spends an exorbitant amount maintaining that all buildings are cleaned every few years.

However in the past few years massive cuts in public services, as austerity fallout from the last economic crash, has seen a return to more littering and of course crime (police numbers drastically cut). Nowadays alot of local neighbourhoods organise their own volunteering litter pickers from local residents, but understandibly few and far between that runs out of steam periodically. It's not yet the scale of the 80s again, and the centre is still relatively spotless, but standards have definitey degraded.
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Old Posted May 17, 2019, 11:43 AM
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The early Spring days in Montreal are a mess. Very dirty from all the detritus left over a winter of ice sidewalk and street. The city adds gravel on sidewalks because salt and snowclearing operations can't get rid of the threatening ice built up over the winter. Early May is much better after all the junk has been cleared. But those few weeks in April the city looks pretty dingy.
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  #5  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 11:56 AM
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Thanks to de blasio, New York is dirtier than ever. It’s not so much the trash and litter as the fragrant, mentally ill homeless population that is allowed to run rampant despite hundred million dollar budgets at various ‘homelessness’ patronage agencies.

Dc on the other hand is spotless these days compared to the bad days of the 1990s. Both philly and Chicago also seem much cleaner than New York.
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  #6  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 1:13 PM
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city, much cleaner and better roads. the county, dirtier in spots, worse roads, example: hypodermic needles laying along suburban arterials that nobody picks up.
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  #7  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 1:25 PM
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Uh, New York is definitely NOT dirtier than ever. It's not even dirtier than it was 20 years ago.
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  #8  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 2:32 PM
jtown,man jtown,man is offline
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Norfolk is certainly cleaner than it was...The city is becoming safer and developing more. We are currently in the process of demolishing(starting this summer) all of our public housing(about 3-4k units) adjacent to downtown to redevelop into a mixed-use area. We got 30 million from HUD just this week.

If everything goes smoothly, and people get what is promised, our central core will be markedly better. Even our poorer areas of town are decent when it comes to cleaning.

Our downtown has a crew of great folks who clean every single day. Downtown folks know these people by their names and it creates a really great small community. I've seen my neighbors picking up garbage on the street and it encourages me to do the same. Its weird, but there's a stigma on cleaning public areas, but I think it is less a thing here because we all know each other.
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  #9  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 3:45 PM
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Cleaner in certain areas such as where I live and fancier parts of town but dirtier overall. I am not surprised to see a refrigerator on the side of the freeway because..Houston.
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  #10  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 3:58 PM
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In the Los Angeles area, it really depends on the neighborhood. Some areas that used to be dirty are now cleaner; other areas are still dirty, and other areas that were always clean are still clean.

I feel that graffiti along some of the freeways has gone up; that issue seems to swing back and forth like a pendulum. I kid you not, but more graffiti seems to coincide with Republican Presidents in the White House. When I was a teen in the 80s, particularly during the Reagan years, there was a lot of graffiti along the freeways. In fact it was in the mid-late 80s that you started seeing razor wire around some of the overhead freeway signs, it was that bad. Then when Clinton came into office, the graffiti disappeared. When Bush II was in the White House, the graffiti came back, and then during the Obama years, nearly disappeared. Now that there's another Repub in the White House, the graffiti is back.
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  #11  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 5:29 PM
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I'm sure DTLA is cleaner than it was, but most of the streets in the Historic Core are still absolutely filthy. It's actually embarrassing and disgusting to walk down Broadway some days. I was walking back from lunch on Broadway last week and saw two guys pissing on the sidewalk in the 5 blocks I was there. Couple that with the typhus outbreaks that have been going on in DTLA and it's pretty clear that it is not a clean place. I think DTLA is the dirtiest city center I've ever been in, save maybe some gross parts of New Orleans.
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  #12  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 5:43 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtown,man View Post
Norfolk is certainly cleaner than it was...The city is becoming safer and developing more. We are currently in the process of demolishing(starting this summer) all of our public housing(about 3-4k units) adjacent to downtown to redevelop into a mixed-use area. We got 30 million from HUD just this week.

If
Where are the sketchiest/most dangerous parts of Norfolk?
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  #13  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 5:46 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc View Post
Cleaner in certain areas such as where I live and fancier parts of town but dirtier overall. I am not surprised to see a refrigerator on the side of the freeway because..Houston.
This. I haven’t been to another US major city where dumping was so prevalent.

In both Austin and Houston, it seems freeway underpasses have gotten worse with litter. That’s probably due to the homeless.
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Old Posted May 17, 2019, 5:50 PM
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My little corner of the world has gotten undeniably cleaner, as those who would litter are gone. Not to mention, in the 1970s, the Flint River was literally a florescent green color from paint runoff.
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  #15  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 6:11 PM
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I wish downtown Phoenix was dirtier, to be honest. My impression is that "dirty" has never really been Phoenix's problem--it is generally very clean. The problem has been downtown being vacant, sun-baked and sterile. If the current resurgence of residential development continues, hopefully dirt and waste will be one of the issues we have to deal with as a byproduct of a busy, functioning downtown neighborhood.
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  #16  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 9:11 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by suburbanite View Post
Where are the sketchiest/most dangerous parts of Norfolk?
Basically the public housing east of downtown, inner-city NE of downtown, and Park Place, which is smack dab in the middle of some of the best neighborhoods in Norfolk. There has been a recent slow process of gentrifying this area but I think it will take a long time to change.

For the record, I have biked in all these areas. I stick to the main roads but I feel relatively safe, biking anyways.
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  #17  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 10:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by muertecaza View Post
I wish downtown Phoenix was dirtier, to be honest. My impression is that "dirty" has never really been Phoenix's problem--it is generally very clean. The problem has been downtown being vacant, sun-baked and sterile. If the current resurgence of residential development continues, hopefully dirt and waste will be one of the issues we have to deal with as a byproduct of a busy, functioning downtown neighborhood.
Hot desert cities (e.g. Phoenix), and maybe really cold winter cities (e.g. Minny-St P, Winnipeg) often seem cleaner. Maybe too hot/cold for rodents & bugs, and not as many homeless? Hot humid cities (especially those with mild weather) often seem more dirty and germy, although there are exceptions of course. I was in Houston once, and saw a roach that must have been two inches long skittering along the sidewalk near my hotel. Singapore is hot & humid but is said to be clean. A couple of decades ago I was in Fairbanks AK in winter, and there appeared to be no bugs at all (20 below zero). However I was told in early summer they do have lots of flies and mosquitos for a few weeks.

Last edited by CaliNative; May 17, 2019 at 10:17 PM.
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  #18  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 10:12 PM
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Chicago - cleaner. . .

. . .
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  #19  
Old Posted May 17, 2019, 10:14 PM
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Originally Posted by TexasPlaya View Post
This. I haven’t been to another US major city where dumping was so prevalent.

In both Austin and Houston, it seems freeway underpasses have gotten worse with litter. That’s probably due to the homeless.
Yeah. . . I've seen some awful shit under the freeways in Texas. . .

. . .
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  #20  
Old Posted May 19, 2019, 2:36 AM
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most of portland is looking pretty good. id even say we reached maximum hobo three years ago and thats improving too. we still have some clusters of tents here and there but the diaspora has spread to further reaches of the city. hobo clusters always end poorly though, that story doesn't change. piss jugs, needles, rats, garbage....by the middle of the summer, hobo camps will be catching fire left and right.
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