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Old 04-01-2016, 11:53 AM
 
1,696 posts, read 2,854,139 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Heidi60 View Post
I totally agree! I noticed that also. Sadly, I don't think the general San Jose population really notices or cares as the quality of life seems to have changed over the past 10-20 years.
You can always leave...

Last edited by bobby_guz_man; 04-01-2016 at 12:03 PM..
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Old 04-01-2016, 11:56 AM
 
1,696 posts, read 2,854,139 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Royal1999 View Post
Silicon Valley is booming, but the state is broke. I don't see it being all that complicated, but I haven't lived in Cali for many years.
We've been in the black for the last few years now. Go back to minding your own business.

*face palm* all these ex-Californians coming back to tell us how bad we're having it. LOL. Sorry folks, we don't give a **** about you. You're dead to us.
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Old 04-01-2016, 07:46 PM
 
Location: Silicon Valley
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Heidi60 View Post
I totally agree! I noticed that also. Sadly, I don't think the general San Jose population really notices or cares as the quality of life seems to have changed over the past 10-20 years.
I think neighborhoods will pull together as they get a bit more settled. The growth here truly has been phenomenal but with high volatility and from around the world. Neighborhood traditions take a little time and stability to develop. Between the .com boom/bust to the housing boom/bust and now to the tech boom....people are constantly coming and going. I think the stability hasn't taken root yet except in some of the older neighborhoods of San Jose, but it will come.

When it does people are going to start caring and working together more. Settled generations have enough vested and earned to want to improve the community. I think the QOL here is excellent personally. Great weather, lots of jobs, low crime, not horrid traffic. But that's relative to Chicago. For others that's relative to some 3rd world country.

But it will gel, and when it does it's going to be filled with people that built it up and make new traditions, because 50,000 people to 1M gives a lot of new voices, ideas etc.
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Old 04-02-2016, 11:01 AM
 
Location: California
6,420 posts, read 7,636,507 times
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Artillery,

I agree with you, however...

Once an area, especially as large as San Jose slides downhill, it is difficult to turn it around. Trashy streets, homeless, gang, and drug issues do not encourage the right kind of people to stay, or new ones to come in at a high enough rate to make real changes.
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Old 04-08-2016, 10:04 PM
 
Location: Bordentown
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Quote:
Originally Posted by citizensadvocate View Post
I noticed Bay Area streets, freeways, empty lots, creek sides had became very trashy in the recent years. The sidewalk in many neighborhoods in San Jose are now obstacle courses formed by unwanted items of all sorts. Its also often necessary to dodge road hazards of piles of spilled garbage on roads when driving. Coyote Creek is basically a "landfill" as seen from Coyote Creek trail near Tully rd. In many parts of San Jose and other Bay Area cities places that were once had visible landscapes are now buried in mountains of spilled garbage from trash trucks. Freeway interchanges such as 101 and 880 now look no different from the middle of a dump. It wasn't nearly as bad when I moved in 15 years ago till about 5 years ago as I go through these parts often. I noticed the street litter issue got much worse in the years following the proliferation of those Single use bag litter reduction ordinances starting from San Jose. Ironically cities that did not pass such ordinances in contrast have far less litter on the streets in fact sometimes the streets in those cities look clean enough to eat off. The contrast may be very big just across city borders i.e between SJ and Milpitas even though Milpitas is just as dense with immigrant population.

I now spend more time in Socal particularly Orange County and San Diego county and commute every day and I find the streets and freeways are virtually litter free compared to back in San Jose and the Bay Area. And we don't have such large city to city contrast in terms of littering in Orange county and San Diego county cities. I wonder why. As those areas the population is just as dense and we have just as many immigrants who are less than careful with litter. The city's Santa Ana, Irvine, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, and Westminster has demographics pretty similar to San Jose. One thing that is even harder to explain is I also spent a half a year in Los Angeles back in 2013 and back then it appears even Los Angeles is relatively clean compared as San Jose that year. Even though Los Angeles is always known as trashy and I travel between downtown, Chinatown, skids row, Lincoln Park, and other parts of the city including the less desirable parts a lot both on city streets and freeways.

Out of curiosity I look at Google street view images since 2007 of the trashy spots in San Jose and I notice in the same spots in SJ the street view images since 2012 generally has far more garbage than any pictures before that. In fact in many of the street view images taken prior to 2011 in those very spots there were hardly any litter in various pictures taken back then compared to today and I was surprised to see the original landscape visible. Today the original "landscape" became unrecognizable because of the layers of trash covering it. The same situation appeared in the Peninsula as well i.e in Redwood city and on Willow rd. to Bay front expressway leading to 84 Dumbarton Bridge in Menlo Park. I just wonder why?
The population has boomed in this area. There are 14 million people living in northern california now. In Silicon Valley alone, there are more than 3 million people. This could explain why you'd find more trash and laying around.
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Old 07-25-2016, 02:18 PM
 
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Socal has a large dense population as well, Orange county has 3.114 million people as of 2013, Its more or less similar to San Jose in terms of density in some areas. In LA county there is 10.02 million people, in San Diego county there is 3.211 million people in a similar land area as Silicon Valley. Many of the population are migrants or immigrants too. Though how come there is far less in terms of litter everywhere compared with the Bay Area?

Regarding the homeless population, I read that San Jose actually evicted and bulldozed a lot of homeless encampments since 2011 yet street litter continues to increase in all areas of the city including in Coyote Creek. And now cities along the Peninsula are almost just as bad even though there are far less homeless over their. Though while cities like San Jose continous to claim their litter policies reduced litter by as much as 60% that figure that has no scientific bearing and couldn't be farther from the truth which was unveiled when the city was sued in 2015 for trashy waterway runoff:
See

San Jose agrees to $100 million pollution cleanup program to reduce trash, sewage spills

source San Jose agrees to $100 million pollution cleanup program to reduce trash, sewage spills - Mercury News
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Old 07-25-2016, 07:23 PM
 
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I wonder the same. In LA unless you are in really bad areas, there's no graffiti. There is panhandling which seems to be increasing in other areas, though.
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Old 07-26-2016, 02:43 AM
 
Location: Planet Earth
1,963 posts, read 3,032,340 times
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Personally, I can't answer the question as to why 10+ million people do anything, even one as simple as "why is there more trash in the Bay Area now". Although I wouldn't ask such an important, earth-shattering question on an internet forum - I'd write a book about it. Try it!
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Old 07-26-2016, 12:21 PM
 
10,920 posts, read 6,887,329 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by citizensadvocate View Post
And now cities along the Peninsula are almost just as bad even though there are far less homeless over their.
According to what? Your weegie board?

Cities on the peninsula are basically where they have been for more than 5 years - there hasn't been some rapid and drastic increase in street litter in any of the peninsula cities I am in regularly (South SF all of the way down to Palo Alto).

Some places are cleaner than average, while some seem dirtier - and the degree of cleanliness/dirtiness hasn't really changed in each of these places.


I agree that the Bay Area seems to have more litter than most other places. Although, I see plenty of litter in the LA region, too - I really can't be certain how different they are overall.
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Old 07-26-2016, 09:58 PM
 
Location: Planet Earth
1,963 posts, read 3,032,340 times
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It's because of all the 'foreigners'. And by 'foreigners', I mean people born in other U.S. states (people from other countries are fine).
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