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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

#751

Post by didibus »

ericmay wrote: post #593
didibus wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Fair enough, that was my point though, San Francisco is really dense, and has no room to expand. So you're looking at a city too big for its own good in some ways, as in, everything is a lot harder to manage when not only is it one of the largest in population, but also smallest in area resulting in really dense population and also no available land for growth.

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

#752

Post by didibus »

rootusrootus wrote: post #464
didibus wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only visited San Francisco, but I think one thing to consider is actually that it's a really small city with just too much going for its size. It's only 46 square mile and has over 800k inhabitants. It's the second densest city after New York. The surrounding Bay area adds 6.7 million more people, a large amount of who regularly go into the city for entertainment or work. I think it's an estimated 160k additiona…

> The city is fully built as well, there's no lots left While that may be true, a huge fraction of the city is single family homes. Increasing housing capacity would be trivial were the political will to exist.

Trivial sounds inappropriate. It doesn't get any more complicated then that scenario in this case.

You'd have to re-appropriate people's family homes, or buy it from them. You have to destroy, possibly decontaminate, and then rebuild, there's the neighborhood to think about as well, with neighbors having to deal with the construction and the newly obstructed view, etc. Does the infrastructure support feeding water, gaz, electricity, internet as needed for a large apartment complex, and so on.

It is feasible, but can you think of a more complicated situation then this one? As it comes to cities and paths to increase housing, San Francisco seems to be one of the hardest one to accomplish.

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

#753

Post by kelseyfrog »

rayiner wrote: post #749
kelseyfrog wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On absolute terms. Among the salient issues, what would a center platform entail? The reason I bring this up is because we can then compare your idea of center to examples world wide. I'm specifically challenging you to enumerate your position so that we can escape the, "Well it just is center," circles we would otherwise run in, or the relative terms we seem to be talking about now.

I gave you concrete examples. In particular, on social issues American democrats are on the far left globally because of how they conceive of those issues. They view of abortion or same sex marriage as individual rights that trump society’s power to regulate. By contrast, in most countries where abortion or same sex marriage is permissible, it’s because society has chosen to allow it, subject to whatever circumstance…

I don't agree. I'm asking for a response in the form of "Global center for issue X is..." Instead I've received a "Part A is left of center, Party B is right of center." So no, I don't think I've been given what I asked for.

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

#754

Post by Der_Einzige »

rayiner wrote: post #728
1024core wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. One thing you'll see when you live in SF long enough (20+ years here) is that they'll come up with all sorts of crazy excuses to justify bad behavior. Blaming PG&E for the $1.7M cost is bullshit.

The nationalization of politics is a huge problem in blue states and cities—it totally eviscerates accountability. Pointing to republicans in Texas becomes a get out of jail free card to explain why a toilet costs $1.7 million in San Francisco. It’s particularly a problem with the bread and butter of state and local governance: education and policing. Why are cops in Minneapolis—a city that has two greens on the city…

Trying to imply that Greens on the city council can stop police from murdering their own constituents is also silly. They don't hire the cops, and meaningful reform of PD department's ends up being the voters job since it's usually ballot measures.

Consider that in places like Portland where city government and local people are openly hostile to the cops, the cops are simply quiet quitting. Despite having the budget to hire hundreds of new cops, literally no one applies to work in Portland.

Thus, if your desire is to get cops to stop murdering, you really should vote for the Democrats or greens or whatever. The issue is that the cops just through a massive hissy fit to punish you, the voter, for trying to bring in a safer society.

I was just in South Korea. The cops there are not empowered. Their police stations are usually the most ghetto looking buildings in their community. I could get a cop to look for my lost bags if I needed it, because that's their role in society there. South Korea is one of the safest societies on earth.

Do we have the same structural factors as south Koreans? No, but demilitarized police can still be effective. Luckily hippy blue cities tend to have low violent crime...

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

#755

Post by Der_Einzige »

antiterra wrote: post #384

Price doesn’t seem that outrageous to me. Public bathrooms in cities get destroyed and are very difficult to maintain; a lot of cities give up on free restrooms entirely. One of the biggest perks of working downtown in a moderately sized or larger city is being able to go to the bathroom there outside of work hours. I priced out some relatively minor kitchen/bathroom renovation work in 2018 at around $100k. Put it of…

All you're telling me right now is that if I were a contractor, you'd be my favorite client because you don't ask questions.

Even in the bay area, those prices are astronomical. You're getting ripped off.

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

#756

Post by rayiner »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #753
rayiner wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave you concrete examples. In particular, on social issues American democrats are on the far left globally because of how they conceive of those issues. They view of abortion or same sex marriage as individual rights that trump society’s power to regulate. By contrast, in most countries where abortion or same sex marriage is permissible, it’s because society has chosen to allow it, subject to whatever circumstance…

I don't agree. I'm asking for a response in the form of "Global center for issue X is..." Instead I've received a "Part A is left of center, Party B is right of center." So no, I don't think I've been given what I asked for.

That is what I gave you. The “global center” on social issues is that the public, through the government, has the prerogative to regulate personal and social morality. They have the power to regulate abortion, who can get married, what kind of birth control is available, etc., based on social consensus. Even countries that choose to allow certain things, typically do so as an exercise of that prerogative, not as a matter of “individual rights.”

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

#757

Post by Der_Einzige »

haberman wrote: post #639
nemo44x wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are not some beautiful, middle class paradises. They're full of towns littered with heroin and meth addicts subsidized by welfare and petty crime. You just don't see it or read about it because it's across thousands of small towns and not concentrated in major cities, where media also tends to live. These places have a lot of violence, social issues, drug overdoses, etc. They…

I just spent a few days in Birmingham, Alabama. The downtown streets were so clean you could eat off of them. It is really hard to come back to Seattle and see all of the trash everywhere. In the Seattle airport one of the bathroom stalls looked like someone had used the floor as a trash can. There were orange peels, discarded shoes, and various other trash sitting on the floor next to the toilet. Social problems exi…

Birmingham has all of its black people locked up with some of the highest incarceration rates in America. They'd just arrest your ass and throw the book at you if you camped in the streets.

This is your alternative.

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

#758

Post by Der_Einzige »

pyuser583 wrote: post #698
yadaeno wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago and New York do not belong in the same category as Seattle and SF. Chicago is orders of magnitude better than seattle wrt inequality and poverty

Chicago is orders of magnitude worse with crime.

Ya, the blue cities that people poo poo on really do have low violent crime. Chicago does not.

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

#759

Post by dustymcp »

roflyear wrote: post #713
throwntoday wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as though SF hasn't been run exclusively by democrats for 30+ years. Democrat politicians care as little for their constituents as republican.

At least democrats do not want to take away women's and gay rights.

I doubt all republicns want that either, the problem is that 2 party system makes it all the same which is insane.

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

#760

Post by Der_Einzige »

asow92 wrote: post #514
juve1996 wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the two-party system limits choice to voters and polarizes camps. A democrat could have genuinely good policy that would make an enormous difference for a lot of republican voters. But stances on social issues like gay marriage, gun control, etc, will make them unviable as a candidate. If they switch and support these issues, then they'll lose their primary.

While I don't think Yang has a shot, I really appreciate his attempt to find a new, level-headed middle. Finding middle ground is our best hope. I think there are ideas from both sides that could help both city and rural constituents, and believe that the culture war has gotten out of control on both sides with irreconcilable differences that disqualify the other. However, I also believe that rural voters could be wo…

Damn, yang was making people think he was a centerist? He's by far the furthest left candidate who ran (yes, even further that Bernie sanders!)
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