June 10, 2014

Does A Place Have To Be Tidy To Be Worth Caring About?

Or are places worth caring about better tended to because people care? The image below  is not the worst, but I'm using it as an example because it is in an area with many popular restaurants and other businesses. The waste running out of the dumpster and the overall unattractiveness of the street don't seem to be detrimental to businesses there.  I often wonder in these situations why the business owners don't take it upon themselves to keep things clean. I have similar questions about the sidewalks along Westwood Boulevard between Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire in Los Angeles. They seem to lack any attention to basic cleanliness and the trees have been trimmed down to shrubs, yet there are only  a handful of vacancies and there's plenty of foot traffic. I'm trying to figure out what I;'m missing. Could be as simple as the fact that the demand for the space and the overall economic vitality override the need for order and cleanliness. I suppose urbanism isn't necessarily tidy. In fact some would say it NEEDS to be a little messy.

No comments: