New York City v. San Francisco

Which city affords its denizens a better quality of “street life”—New York or San Francisco?  A San Franciscan, the question came to mind recently as my bride and I walked along garbage-strewn sidewalks and past graffiti-laden buildings in The Big Apple.

As a City and County of San Francisco employee, I routinely take calls from citizens who complain of dumped garbage, graffiti and worse.  San Franciscans may also seek enforcement action from their government to remove garbage containers from sidewalks, and even from private property, if such containers are viewable from the public right of way:  The City and County has ordinances on the books that require property owners to keep their garbage cans not just off of the street but hidden from view altogether.  This ordinance may even force a property owner to build a lean-to on their land with slats close enough to conceal such offending garbage company-provided “Toters.” 

No graffiti tag, no matter how artful or even exquisite, is allowed to see the light of another day without abatement action being initiated once it has been reported to the civil servants of “The City.”  Woe to the city official who takes a call from a San Francisco citizen who must express their outrage about a government that “allows” graffiti vandals to run rampant.

If New York City has similar “quality of life” laws, its City Hall seems woefully incapable of enforcing said regulations.  On our first night there, the sidewalk curbs were lined with not just garbage containers but plastic bag-wrapped trash as well.  All of the garbage had disappeared by the morning of our second day, but the bulky items and trash bags began to collect anew by that evening.

New York City seems to have no such timetable for the removal of graffiti.  Although former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani first committed his city’s public works resources to combat the specter of “copy cat blight”--one broken window spawns other broken windows—if New York city has a “graffiti detail” similar to San Francisco’s, it is woefully short of adequate resources.

Seeing such urban “decay” throughout the East Village, SoHo and elsewhere in the lower half of Manhattan could well have led me to the conclusion that San Francisco’s quality of street life is better than New York’s.  But San Francisco is not picture perfect—surely there will always be trash dumped on its sidewalks, too, and graffiti will forever both grace and mar its structures.  I love living in San Francisco, regardless, even if all of the negatives that disgust so many of my fellow residents result in their endless irritation.

And as for New York?   The city’s sheer size and seemingly endless number of people on its sidewalks make it a place in which I would never want to live.  But the city is awe-inspiring in what it has to offer culturally.  I am too interested in looking at its endless array of interesting architecture and people, and to view the countless treasures contained within the interior of its buildings, to feel bothered by its trash.  I will keep coming back to enjoy the quality of life to be found in The Big Apple for as long as there is space enough on its sidewalks to allow me to pass.