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San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

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Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#591

Post by anon291 »

jorblumesea wrote: post #575
anon291 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the SF local government were to substantially change, particular political party officials would be out of a job, because the city is run by one party, and is in fact the breeding ground of a lot of major national politicians from that party. People should think about this when they go to vote, because several SF politicians are attempting to potentially run for president and other national positions. One of them…

NIMBY-ism and the accumulation of power through real estate and capture of local power structures isn't an inherent to SF or any specific political party. It happens in Texas, NYC and Idaho.

Texas and Idaho have much more housing and build much more, for better or worse. And are much cheaper.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#592

Post by muaytimbo »

mattnewton wrote: post #572
muaytimbo wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in New Haven for 4 years. The difference in the amount of trash between American cities is vast, compare NYC with Chicago. Or really any city on the east coast with Chicago for that matter.

I'm not sure if you mean that Chicago is clean or dirty? I saw a lot of both last time I visited, it's hard to say. It certainly seemed a lot cleaner than, say, Rochester NY or Philadelphia when I visited, but not sure if that was just the areas I was in. Of course the difference is vast, I think you could compare one part of NYC with NYC even and end up with vastly different ideas of trash. And that's kinda what I a…

Chicago is a much cleaner city. No comparison with New Haven, NYC (where I used to live), Philly (where I live now) or really anywhere else on the east coast. The culture of throwing trash on the ground is endemic on the east coast.

I was flying from NYC to Denver a few months ago and a Denverite and I struck up a conversation on this very topic after observing multiple people throwing trash on the floor in LGA. Speaking of which, Denver, another city that is much cleaner than anywhere on the east coast.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#593

Post by ericmay »

didibus wrote: post #417
ericmay wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading. The other problem facing cities such as San Francisco is that despite its density it does a piss poor job at public transit and is still focused on car-first infrastructure. To your point, the surrounding area is ~7 million. It’s physically impossible for all of them or even most of them to drive everywhere without gigantic infrastructure problems. It will simp…

> Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading As in exaggerating it's livable land size? Or the other way around?

For example, if you look at lists of "largest cities in the US" [1] you'll find Columbus in the top 15 or so. But if you actually visit, it's no larger than Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, or other similarly sized metro areas.

This occurs because the city occupies ~225 square miles [1] and so when you look at density it turns out Columbus isn't much of a big city at all.

If you look at this link from Wikipedia, Columbus is even larger than San Francisco or Boston! Wow so big. But the relevant metric is density, not square milage.

I could have been more clear here but I just wanted other readers to note that you can't just look at square milage or even population, you have to look at those together to get density to help derive insight.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#594

Post by erulabs »

puffoflogic wrote: post #497
erulabs wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just need to delegate authority and let them act mostly autonomously Not to be glib, and I expect to be excoriated for such a comment, but I literally cannot think of a way to not be snarky: I believe what you're describing is called ownership . Particularly in discussions of SF, I find this amazingly long road back to where we started: "If only there was some system where people with the most interest in a particu…

Quoted post unavailable.

Fascism is the idea that the nation (and the race) of a people is more important than any individual member of the people. A fascist would say bureaucracy only implies a lack of power. Private property is the opposite of the textbook definition of fascism - private ownership is literally the idea that EVERY SINGLE individual is more important than the nation.

The fascist answer is to consolidate more power in a single political body. This would, indeed, make toilets cheaper to build. I would suggest that the polar opposite of that would also make toilets cheaper to build. The real question should be: how cheap should toilets be to build, and what is it about "fairness" that makes things so expensive?

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#595

Post by dekhn »

avisser wrote: post #544
hot_gril wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you call it that if the entire point of the city to you is just the office, haha. I do hesitate to call my home city "LAX."

At least LAX is in Los Angeles. Not true of SFO.

While SFO isn't in the city limits, it is owned by the City and is in an unincorporated section of San Mateo; the SF police have a significant presence (probably the largest force) on site.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#596

Post by mitchdoogle »

muaytimbo wrote: post #592
mattnewton wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you mean that Chicago is clean or dirty? I saw a lot of both last time I visited, it's hard to say. It certainly seemed a lot cleaner than, say, Rochester NY or Philadelphia when I visited, but not sure if that was just the areas I was in. Of course the difference is vast, I think you could compare one part of NYC with NYC even and end up with vastly different ideas of trash. And that's kinda what I a…

Chicago is a much cleaner city. No comparison with New Haven, NYC (where I used to live), Philly (where I live now) or really anywhere else on the east coast. The culture of throwing trash on the ground is endemic on the east coast. I was flying from NYC to Denver a few months ago and a Denverite and I struck up a conversation on this very topic after observing multiple people throwing trash on the floor in LGA. Spea…

It's because Chicago has alleyways to hide their trash and NYC doesn't. It's not that Chicagoans are any cleaner or have cleaner habits

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#597

Post by muaytimbo »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #596
muaytimbo wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago is a much cleaner city. No comparison with New Haven, NYC (where I used to live), Philly (where I live now) or really anywhere else on the east coast. The culture of throwing trash on the ground is endemic on the east coast. I was flying from NYC to Denver a few months ago and a Denverite and I struck up a conversation on this very topic after observing multiple people throwing trash on the floor in LGA. Spea…

It's because Chicago has alleyways to hide their trash and NYC doesn't. It's not that Chicagoans are any cleaner or have cleaner habits

Chicago also uses cans instead of throwing trash onto the streets. In conjunction with using alleyways I think we have planned structural differences between the two populations. Surely the beginning of an argument for the "cleaner" and "cleaner habits" between the two.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#598

Post by notch656a »

Kalium wrote: post #586
notch656a wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being exposed without, say maybe wooden structure to block the wind around you while you sleep, may be a reason homeless build fires. The last story I was able to find was of someone that died exactly that way, a fire in near freezing weather in SF [0]. If that person had a lockable wooden shed to put blankets and sleep in, she wouldn't have needed a fire. [0] https://www.kqed.org/news/11906661/woman-who-died-in-home…

When I lived in Oakland, my apartment building had several close calls with wildfires caused by poorly contained campfires in a nearby encampment of vulnerable community members housed in tents to keep the wind off as they slept. Given that lockable wooden sheds / "tiny homes" can and do catch fire from things like poorly managed propane stoves in particle board construction, perhaps a better solution is in order. As…

The Canadian woodworker built these structures for people who had no actual housing. Not people who had the immediate option of an actual house and just picked living in the shack for funzies.

Your suggestion that these homeless people should have just went in 'actual' housing instead is absurd, it almost certainly wasn't an option for many if not most of them in the face of the immediate expedient options.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#599

Post by jerrysievert »

bombcar wrote: post #571
jerrysievert wrote: post #311

I'm kind of surprised that new plans were drawn up when a perfectly serviceable toilet design[1] has been done and in production for much less[2]. This doesn't get rid of the permitting process, but it has been debugged and is already working in multiple cities. 1. https://portlandloo.com 2. https://pffcdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Portland-Loo-P... - $90,000 + estimated install costs of $4000

"Not invented here" is not just a problem at companies like Google. And how dare you suggest that SF could use something named after another city!

I mean, they could rename them.

but very good point about NIH-syndrome. it's a shame that so much money needs to be spent when another solution has shown to work so well.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#600

Post by ProfessorLayton »

bombcar wrote: post #558
nostromo wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a wildly successful city economy and becoming poorly managed is a causal relationship I think. In regular cities you simply can’t afford to be wasteful. But San Francisco and Seattle have endless streams of easy money to burn. It’s sort of like the oil curse. The governments of gulf states can afford to be uniquely terrible, in ways other governments cannot.

I suspect it's also part and parcel with having a city that is vastly "commuter" in some way - SF has about 800k population and estimates are that 250k commute into it each day; meaning that the "voting residents" make up only about 80% of the "actual city users". This means there's a steady supply of "tax income" that is not from residents, which I bet exacerbates the problem until such time as companies move to the…

SF is a City and a County
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