211–220 of 832 posts
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People sometimes use major airport codes as shorthand for a city or the metropolitan region the airport serves.
People who live in San Francisco don't use SFO to refer to the city. The airport is actually a couple of cities away (there are a lot of cities in the Bay Area).
Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of the most abject inequity and poverty? It seems that there's a fine line between compassion and enablement when it comes to the deep blue municipalities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, etc. Sure the rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are areas with similar problems and mixed politics, but they also somehow feel different.
Red states are filled with poverty/inequity it’s just more spread out.
Drive through the derelict areas in rural America and you will see similar issues.
In contrast the tiny city of Zürich Switzerland has 106 public toilet facilities. [1] Some are staffed, some cost money to use and some are open 247. Does my tax money pay for this, yes, I have used them and I am glad they exist. The maintenance of these 106 facilities cost around 6,895,000 CHF (~USD) per year. Around 40% of that is staffing costs and 23% is rent to 3rd parties. Yearly investment in upgrades etc. is…
SF has something like 67 public toilets, 49 of them staffed, according to an article written two years ago. And the population of the city is about 50% greater than Zürich.
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We have an access road that was sized for utility trucks. We had to widen it slightly because of obscure California regulations. Widening it didn’t cost $1.7M. However, the cost per linear foot was within a factor of two of buying a line of Tesla Model 3s. This is in an unincorporated (rural) area, on a farm. The work lasted one rainstorm before needing extensive repairs. I’m completely unsurprised that building a hu…
Too many bureaucrats and construction profiteers, not enough good laborers.
> San Francisco, which is struggling with a troubling homelessness and public-defecation crisis, needs more public toilets. The irony in this statement, given the reasons why this toilet costs so much, is absolutely unreal. I had to check the date on this article to make sure it wasn't an old April's Fools skit or something, but it seems red tape and NIMBYism have escalated to such a degree in SF that (a) securing bu…
I think it's not unreasonable to attack effects of homelessness as well as the cause. Some problems are really hard and some are just hard . In other places where it wont cost 1.7M to build one public toilet, this wouldn't be seen as such a failure or mis-step, just extending public services to people in crisis - as long as it's not seen as "fixed" by doing so.
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We have an access road that was sized for utility trucks. We had to widen it slightly because of obscure California regulations. Widening it didn’t cost $1.7M. However, the cost per linear foot was within a factor of two of buying a line of Tesla Model 3s. This is in an unincorporated (rural) area, on a farm. The work lasted one rainstorm before needing extensive repairs. I’m completely unsurprised that building a hu…
Too many bureaucrats and construction profiteers, not enough good laborers.
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I work for the government in one of my jobs. I see it all the time.
Also, I think professionals working in STEM fields should be careful not to encourage this race-to-the-bottom wage-wise for workers, for it may also happen to us sooner than we may hope.
Why is it that the deepest blue areas of the country have some of the most abject inequity and poverty? It seems that there's a fine line between compassion and enablement when it comes to the deep blue municipalities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, etc. Sure the rustbelt, deep south, and Appalachia are areas with similar problems and mixed politics, but they also somehow feel different.
After all, in OK or MS you need a car, which is a $2000+ asset, just to even access any public space or resource or make yourself visible at all.
There's much more poverty in those places, but it is hidden away. You can see a slight bit of it at gas stations that are walking distance to poor areas, but for the most part, those are the lucky ones, and the unlucky ones are walking distance to nothing.
I would much rather be destitute in a big city where I can access all kinds of formal and informal resources like temp agencies or subways to sleep on, than in a rural area where I am totally dependent on rides to anywhere.
The advantage of the rural poverty accrues solely to the wealthier, who don't have to look at the poor as much as the urban wealthy and middle classes do. And perhaps that is why we are kinder (well, ok, slightly less unkind) to the deeply poor here, because we actually see them regularly rather than having locked them away so securely we can actually trick ourselves into thinking we don't have them here.
It is deeply ironic that you came to the opposite conclusion by accepting superficial appearances. The trick of hiding the poor by means of car culture sure worked on you.
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This may be true in San Francisco and certainly is in many other parts of the U.S. It is not true in places with functioning government.
Yes, obviously. We're talking about San Francisco where this toilet is being built with a very explicit purpose.
Is the SF Bay Area the worst managed "successful" economic urban area in the world ? It performs pretty badly on public transport, safety, affordability & sanitation. All its pros seem to exist despite the management, and not because of it. (Universities, Jobs, Weather, Nature) I thought Greater Seattle was badly managed, but it has been funding light rail, missing middle-housing and recently started reversing the cr…