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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Between Chicago, NYC, and SF, Chicago is the one major US city you mentioned that actually has a design that accomodates sanitation. NYC is filthy, but that makes sense, because there are no alleys.

I've never heard anyone say Chicago was dirtier than San Francisco before, and I'm just going to assume you've never spent any time here.

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I have not spent much time in Chicago, but I was born there, and have friends there. Where they live(d): Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village and Bucktown all seemed pretty grungy. Also, it seemed pretty dirty driving from the airport to their places. Whenever my dad drove us to see our old house in Berwyn, that seemed dirty too... I think by sheer size alone Chicago has to beat out SF in terms of dirtiness. The dirty parts of SF are just so epically dirty that it makes people think the whole city is covered with needles and poo. Really it's just a few select corridors... the rest of the city is very clean.

I lived in SOMA, I lived in Bayview, and I lived in Noe Valley, and all of them were covered in poo. I spent time in the Mission, which was covered in poo. The only place in San Francisco that wasn't fantastically dirty was North Beach, presumably because the tourists mopped it all up.

Berwyn isn't Chicago.

Wicker Park, Uky Village, and Bucktown are all essentially the same neighborhood --- they're adjacent, clustered, and only a few square miles; they're Chicago's version of SOMA or Greenwich Village. And yet they're tree-lined (right now, they're covered in fall canopy), and every street there has an alleyway, where the trash goes.

NYC and SF are dirty in large part because they are poorly planned.

Dude...you lived in Bayview? Of course you found it filthy! It's one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. SOMA is marginally better, but still pretty grungy and industrial.

I don't know why you think Noe Valley is covered in poo, though. Noe Valley seems no more or less filthy than the nicer areas of the Castro.

I don't know why you think Noe Valley is covered in poo

I found that observation a bit odd. The part about North Beach being clean was also a bit suspicious. Whenever people make blanket claims about how dirty SF is, I wonder if they've ever been to the western half of the city.

If Noe Valley is covered in poo, at least it's dog poo.

I lived near 30th and Noe (on Harper). Harper was clear. It was way up on a big hill. The bottom of the hill, 30th, Church, Dolores --- great Chinese food, filthy.

My point was, I lived in really crappy SF, I lived in hipster urban SF, and I lived in residential SF, and they were all filthy.

I've never seen anything too disgusting in Noe Valley. The main principle of distribution of filth in San Francisco seems to be this: homeless people are too lazy to climb hills.

every street there has an alleyway, where the trash goes

This is the first thing that I noticed when visiting New York for the first time. The place stunk, because the sidewalk was half for garbage and half for pedestrians. I just couldn't believe it.

(Pittsburgh is like this too. I remember having to literally move boxes of garbage away from the doorway to a restaurant to get inside. Not a great way to start your meal. The food ended up being bad, too, and I got a big piece of paper mixed in with my food. I don't think I ate anything for the rest of that conference...)

Anyway, Chicago has its problems, but it is certainly nice-looking and well-designed. I have not visited anywhere else in the US that is as clean.

(Tokyo and Copenhagen are similarly clean, though. Even Hong Kong is better than New York.)

I have to disagree, with the exception of Toronto, I've never seen a cleaner big city than Chicago.

Come to vancouver, and you find the west side downtown eerily clean. (East side vancouver is the most ghetto place in canada, literally)

Vancouver is cleaner than Chicago.

I second you on Toronto. I lived there for a few months and was absolutely amazed at how clean it was. Recycling, compost, and trash bins on every corner. Whenever I tell people about Toronto, the first thing I talk about is its cleanliness.

I lived in Chicago for 5 years, San Fran area for 10 years, Los Angeles for 7 years, and Kansas City for about 8 years. I have to say that SF is probably the dirtiest, at least in parts, though Chicago always felt kind of rust-belty in many parts, rather than dirty. In KC, cleanliness tracks money more closely than any other place I've been. The Southwestern cities have always struck me as the cleanest of the places I've been outside of Germany (at least 30 years ago), Switzerland, Canada, and Monaco. Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio, Albuquerque.

The other big problem with SF is the parking. Horrendous. And yes, many of the people there do seem to spend a great deal of time in an advanced state of self-congratulation.

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