Taking in the view on the balcony of my friends' home in the Castro district of San Francisco (picture, left), it's hard to imagine a better city to be in the world. There are the hills, the fresh air, and the lovingly maintained gardens in the back of most of the neighboring buildings. It's simply beautiful.  

There are few cities where I feel as good and at home as San Francisco.  The city justifiably has important symbolic value throughout the world as a bastion of individual freedom and human dignity, and this is undeniably a desirable feature of life in this area.  The Bay Area, San Francisco's region, is my favorite part of the United States.  I lived in the East Bay (Berkeley) over 10 years ago while in grad school, and I never forgot the unique feel to this area.  The climate is mild, the vegetation is Mediterranean, the people are generally tolerant and open-minded, and there's simply a spontaneity and sense of possibility in the air here. Most residents wouldn't think of living anywhere else. 

From another height, looking out over the city from one of its rocky hilltops, it would be easy to idealize this city and imagine it as one of the most sophisticated and livable in the world. San Francisco, however, is usually experienced at ground level, and the experience here strays from any idealization of that sort. 

This city is no earthly paradise, although it has an incredible charm and many attractive attributes.  But its global reputation and image are bound to disappoint on closer examination, as many foreign visitors have told me.  This extremely expensive city has seriously rough edges that drag down its quality of life in multiple ways. Despite being virtually the wealthiest large city in the United States, it often has a ramshackle, dirty and run-down look to it.  This shabby appearance comes as a surprise to many visitors from abroad who expect more from this legendary city.  In fact, in the face of incredible natural advantages, a highly educated population and wealth, it settles for a second-rate quality of life for the bulk of its inhabitants.  Yes, I did say San Francisco has a second-rate quality of urban life.  In this blog posting I will explain my view.  Brace yourself as I dig further into the pathologies of American cities. 

But first a little glimpse of beauty from this city (it is rich in beauty like this), to highlight the shame of allowing so much of it to be so mediocre.

There are four outstanding things I will focus on, common to American cities, that stand in the way of San Francisco reaching its very high potential. They are poor infrastructure, lack of human scale, autocentric design, and immense social problems.  

The American Society of Civil Engineers, in their 2013 Report Card for America's Infrastructure, gave the United States an overall grade of D+ for its crumbling infrastructure.  This is close to a total failure.    
I am rather astounded at the general public's apathy in the face of our country’s shamefully ill-maintained infrastructure.  I'd expect outrage, really. Perhaps Americans have gotten used to this state of affairs, and don't know what quality public infrastructure looks like in other wealthy countries around the world.

This rough infrastructure is, in fact, one of the things most characteristic of American cities.  San Francisco is no exception, and a walk around this city can be a big surprise to visitors from northern Europe, Japan or Australia. Things are simply not well maintained, or maintained in a manner fitting a poor, developing world city, not one of the wealthiest and potentially most beautiful cities in the world.  Sidewalks and streets are haphazardly patched, public transport is rough, and city parks are often in poor condition.  

The poor infrastructure of this city is highlighted by the liberal use of cement, frosting all surfaces often without leaving any space for trees and vegetation or other features.  Although San Francisco is politically 'green', the city itself is in desperate need of more trees.  SF ranks 17th of the 20 largest cities in the US in terms of its urban forest and in terms of street trees, I'm sure it must be at the absolute bottom.  Many, if not most, streets of San Francisco are uninviting urban deserts, despite enjoying an exceptionally good climate.  Below are a sampling of San Francisco's cement-covered and lifeless streets.  

Streets in San Francisco, like those in most other American cities, are often exceptionally wide.  Their breadth is totally out of proportion to the height of the buildings that run along them, making for unattractive and often very uninviting streetscapes. Streets seem to be simply thought of as corridors for mobility. Other functions of streets, as public space, for example, are just an afterthought.  

For most of the world's urban history, cities and streets were built on a human scale.  Streets in older cities around the world tend to be relatively narrow, and these streets seem in scale with the buildings that line them.  Americans seem to have forgotten what makes for exciting, engaging and beautiful streets.  The key is a profound sense of humanity in design. This is quickly recognizable.  Streets and public spaces designed with humanity attract people, not just passers-through, but people who stay for extended periods of time.

Exacerbating the scale issue in San Francisco is what I call a low density of detail in many areas, making streetscapes unappealing and unengaging. Great streets have many details, complex details, providing many reasons to stop and do something, if it only be to sit on a comfortable bench and admire the fine paving stones and beautiful landscaping.  This density of features can be called 'friction'.  Streets with friction are destinations in and of themselves, places you go to do many things at once (without having to get in your car and go elsewhere) and places that bring people together.  San Francisco has many streets like this (for example, Dolores and Mission Streets), of course, but far too many of its streets are rather lifeless.   This is a shame, as open spaces in cities are opportunities for the common good and streets are generally the most common open spaces citizens have to enjoy.  Streets should be the most important public spaces in a city.

Its easy to see when a street has become a successful public place because it will attract people.  Streets that are unsuccessful have few people and are lifeless.  Naturally, cities need a full range of street types (including quiet residential streets), but San Francisco has vast wasted street spaces that could instead be alive with street life and business opportunities.  

Market Street is emblematic of what's wrong with many of San Francisco's streets.  It is a low density, extremely wide expanse of cement and asphalt, with generally very low friction (except in the heart of downtown and near Castro Street).  I would never want to spend time on most of it.  It is ugly, a haven for San Francisco's homeless and really a showcase of the city's social problems.   

Maybe I should applaud SF for not hiding America's reality of haves and have nots, but still, Market Street is generally not a pleasant place to be, despite its key location running from downtown to the Castro.  It should be San Francisco's most vibrant and attractive street, without excuses.  

A main driver of the scale problem in San Francisco is the autocentric design of its streetscapes.  

In American cities, people on opposite sides of a street are usually separated by wide swathes of fast-moving traffic.  Cars, and space dedicated to cars, eat up the bulk of the open space streets provide, Streets are not primarily thought of as places for people to gather and do things, but instead as spaces to facilitate the rapid movement of automobile traffic.   

In San Francisco, the car-dominated street design spreads over into the design of sidewalks and buildings to an extent that I have not seen in any other densely populated American city.  Despite having decent public transportation within the city (decent, not great), a high proportion of residents of San Francisco have cars and use them to commute, particularly if they work outside of the city.  Regional public transit in the Bay Area is inconvenient and expensive.        

This reliance on auto transport created a problem:  where to park all the cars in this densely packed city. The solution was to build housing with garages on the first floor, in addition to allocating much street space for car parking.  A distinctive feature of San Francisco, therefore, is the garage doors facing the streets throughout much of the city, as you can see in the picture above.  This proliferation of garages along the city's streets drastically distorts the function of the city's streets by creating dead zones along sidewalks.  There is no space for shops or cafes,  The streets are bare of trees and vegetation because cars cannot leave garages if trees are planted along the street.  The result is an abundance of lifeless and treeless streets that are wholly unattractive and serve no social function.        

Allowing car owners to dominate so much of a city's open space is not only detrimental to urban livability, the use of this space by cars costs a city money.  A study from Connecticut shows how much allocating and subsidizing parking spots actually costs a city (in the case of Hartford, it comes to about $1,200/year per parking place).  In San Francisco's case, as sidewalk and street space in front of the endless garages cannot be utilized for anything else, there is a huge hidden subsidy that must be considered beyond the subsidized street parking the city provides.  

Finally, San Francisco shares the American problem of vast, inadequately addressed social problems.  Visitors to San Francisco will quickly note the huge numbers of homeless people on the city's streets.  

Riding public transport is another way to come into contact with large numbers of people with serious problems.  You simply don't see this kind of thing, on this scale, in other wealthy countries. Crime is also higher than it is in most of Europe, Canada, Australia or Japan. 

San Francisco has, it must be said, a very racially and economically diverse population.  The varied groups have different needs and interests, and the national and local governments have not been very skillful at managing the situation, resulting in severe problems such as homelessness.   

What I write about San Francisco may seem harsh and clearly, to some extent, stems from my frustration with the same sorts of problems I see in every American city I visit. The solutions seem so obvious to an outsider, but they are never simple.  San Francisco, in particular, pains me because the city so obviously has many of the ingredients required to make it one of the great cities of the world.  It is surrounded by natural beauty, is a welcoming and accepting place, has a very vibrant city culture by any measure, including a remarkable food scene.

Some tweaks to the system are underway that will make San Francisco a better city. 

For example, an organization called 'Friends of the Urban Forest' (FOF) is helping city residents convert some of that great expanse of concrete in front of their homes into gardens and tree planting spaces. (See picture to right) My friends Buddy and Orie (whose veranda is featured in the first photo of this blog posting) have just participated in a project in their neighborhood with FOF.  The results are wonderful. However, like much of the urban improvements going on in San Francisco, projects like this tend to be driven by the educated and wealthy, and are not benefiting all areas equally.  I rarely saw urban greening projects in the poorer parts of town.  

Another encouraging sign is that the generally rather dreadful Market Street, which I write about above, is undergoing massive development now that will no doubt clean it up and restore some of its traditional role as one of the great streets of San Francisco. New high rises are popping up along several areas of the street, and new shopping and commercial development will follow to bring life back to this area.  

Finally, I've just read that a law involved with major urban planning projects is changing in California to be less car friendly.  This will allow for public transit projects to get approval more easily and speed up developments such as San Francisco's new bus rapid transit line.    

When I look at my pictures from San Francisco, I really miss this city and my good friends there.  I'm hopeful that San Francisco will tackle its quality of life issues and move towards a respectable position in the group of the world's most livable cities.   It has a long way to go.  

I started this posting upon arrival in the United States at the end of February of this year.  As my re-entry to American life continued, I decided to hold off on publishing.  Now I retrospectively add it to my blog.  In total, I’ve spent over 3 months in this country, with month-long stays in Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, and shorter stays in Chicago, Columbus, Ohio and New York.  This posting may surprise some Americans, but that’s great.  I want my postings to be provocative and I would love to stir up a bit of controversy. 

Coming back to the USA and its cities always presents me with a perplexing mix of feelings.   There are certain delights, some incredibly alive and exciting neighborhoods, and abundant areas of promise.  On the whole, however, I am left wondering why American cities seem to be so far behind other wealthy cities around the world in terms of physical infrastructure and the attractiveness and liveliness of their streets.  I’m writing about this because I believe we as Americans can and should do far better.  Somehow we have generally forgotten how to grow and sustain great cities, the kind of cities where streets don’t simply serve as corridors for getting from one place to another, but are engaging destinations in themselves.  I recognize that many cities in the US are enjoying a revival, but they have a long way to go to compete with the most livable cities in the world. 

In light of our long history of economic advantage (the US was the world’s wealthiest society for most of the 20th century), American cities should be vibrant places that lead the world in terms of quality of life and beauty.  We’ve decided to settle for something far less.  The majority of American urban environments don’t engage and delight, they don’t respect their vibrant pasts, and very often they feel lifeless, lonely and forlorn.  More importantly, they are environments that perpetuate divisions and social problems.  

There are many ways to evaluate urban environments, such as the methodologies used in livability rankings by firms such as Mercer and the Economist Intelligence Unit.  In my research I focus on my own subjective experience as a pedestrian, cyclist and public transport user in a broad sampling of a given city’s area.  I never drive a car, although I occasionally become a passenger in one.  I don’t gravitate to tourist attractions (what do they really tell you about a city?), but instead try to see the face of urban life across socioeconomic lines through a kind of random sampling and, honestly, aimless wandering.   I think I’ve developed a good nose for sniffing out interesting and representative areas wherever I go.  I try to put my observations into a more objective context through reference to statistics and other information about a city.  My goal is to get closer to understanding how the ‘whole’ of a city comes together and how smoothly it functions for all its inhabitants, especially those at lower income levels.  In fact, as I’ve written before, I believe you can learn far more about a city and society by observing how the lower socioeconomic classes live than by observing how the wealthy live.    

If I’m pressed to come up with a set of characteristics that typify the backwardness of American cities, I would include a combination of poor space utilization, shoddy building construction, a general roughness and sloppiness in terms of infrastructure (and  even institutions), and gross social inequality and its concomitant social problems.  

You can see the poor land utilization in the unsightly parking lots that line streets and often dominate suburbanized city centers.  You can see the shoddiness in new construction that utilizes low-grade materials that are not designed to last and improve with age.  The roughness is clearly evident in the poorly paved streets and sidewalks.  You can experience the backwardness on the generally outdated, unattractive and inconvenient public transportation systems.   Most jarringly, perhaps, you are faced with the astounding social inequality whenever you leave behind the enclaves of the middle class and wealthy, especially when out of the isolating cocoon of an automobile.   The social problems are not impacting merely an isolated fringe.  Statistics on urban crime, health, homelessness and education put American cities into a league of their own in the developed world.  In fact, it is the huge gap between wealthy areas and the rest, combined with auto-centric transport, that most uniquely identifies American cities.

Improving urban quality of life in the US will depend on grappling with our enormous social problems, returning to a more inclusive, equal society, and shifting away from the auto as a primary means of transportation.   Moving away from the auto will allow us to bring our cities back to a human scale. Human-scaled cities accelerate positive social change.   They provide for stronger local communities and increased safety.  With excellent public transport, cities and their regions become better integrated and urban social connectivity rises.  This increase in social connectivity provides new opportunities for the poor and fosters increased civic participation and pride.  This 'reconnectedness' and revitalization, along with increased investment in infrastructure and improved institutions such as schools, will support healing of the damaged social fabric.

When I ask Americans about the problems facing American cities, I quickly realize how foreign my view of American cities is.  Americans are generally proud of their cities and have few suspicions that they suffer in comparison with cities in Europe or other wealthy countries.  Ask a western European, Canadian, Japanese or Australian for their candid opinions on US cities, however, and an array of negative characterizations arise.   Beyond conversational anecdotes, American cities do rather poorly, as I've pointed out, in the most famous international livability rankings.  When considering America's long history of wealth, it’s rather astounding to realize that no American city makes it to the top 20 cities in the world (Honolulu makes it in one ranking) in terms of quality of life, while almost all of Canada’s and Australia’s major cities do. 

Presented with this information, many Americans are defensive.  They are loathe to consider the relatively poor standing of American cities in comparison with their global peers.  Maybe this is because we grew accustomed to seeing ourselves as number one in the world and are uncomfortable with the reality that our position has slipped rather dramatically by so many measures. 

Americans have come to settle for a kind of rough functionality in their cities without focusing on the finer points of city life.  Maybe Americans tend not to notice the details of their cities because they are generally racing through them in their cars.  If they took more time to walk, ride a bicycle, or use public transportation, their views would probably change.  In fact, one of the reasons automobiles may be so popular in the US is not only that they provide the quickest or only means of getting around, but they also provide a relatively safe isolation from the frequently unattractive urban reality they traverse.  

Cities are a reflection of a society's values.  As the US has its own set of values, I don't expect American cities to be replicas of cities in Europe or elsewhere.  But are our values so different from countries such as Canada and Australia that our cities should present such a different face?   Most cities in the US seem downright rough, unpolished and run-down compared to those in their rich-country peers.  Outside of the wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs, streets, highways and sidewalks are in generally poor condition, there are large areas of urban blight with little street life to speak of, and there is poor public transportation to connect the disadvantaged with opportunities in other areas.  Overall it's an aesthetic embarrassment and livability challenge.  The roughness adds stress to the daily life of city dwellers and degrades their quality of life.  What's more, I believe a society's values are also be formed by the nature of its physical environment.  The roughness of American cities is not only a product of the country's social problems, but actively creates and perpetuates these problems.  
This state of affairs is an unnecessary shame, as American cities still have many positive qualities that could be leveraged to create pleasing urban environments.  These qualities include remarkable friendliness, a lot of green space, cultural diversity and economic dynamism.  

At least superficially, American cities have to be among the most friendly and welcoming in the world.  Outside of big eastern cities such as New York (and even there, really), people are not afraid to smile at, or talk with, perfect strangers. This is an important, but maybe undervalued, element of urban quality of life. America, in my experience, is at or near the top in this hard-to-measure attribute.  I find it addictive.  It seems to happen in all sorts of places: a person you pass will say hello, a fellow customer in line will strike up a conversation, or a fellow passenger on a train or bus will ask you a question.  

American cities also tend to have a lot of green, particularly in their residential neighborhoods.  Green right-of-ways are common in most cities, which often support a healthy canopy of street trees.  In denser cities in Europe, this is often not the case. 

Another hallmark of many American cities is incredible diversity.  There are often large ethnic, racial and cultural minorities.  In most major cities there is no longer a white majority.  This diversity creates a dynamic social atmosphere full of all sorts of surprises including a huge range of authentic ethnic restaurants. I believe it's rather easy to find a niche and feel at home in many American cities.

Finally, it's obvious that the American economic system is overall very productive.  There is a general feeling in wealthier and middle-class districts of incredible material abundance. This wealth, combined with a relatively low population density in most areas, makes for generously proportioned homes surrounded by green.  It's rather stunning to see how well so many people live on a continental scale.  

In my postings that follow on four American cities, I will delve further into these thoughts, try to get to the bottom of what ails America's cities, and look for examples of both troubled and thriving streets and neighborhoods.