Ranking My Cities - Infrastructure

This is part two of my series on ranking the 9 cities I have lived in during the past 10 years. In my first piece I focused on the weather. (See part 1) In this piece I will be focusing on each city’s infrastructure. The term infrastructure can be used to describe many aspects of a city including the actual physical networks needed for a modern city like roads and sewers to the institutions needed for the economic and social health of the city like schools and hospitals.

This piece will only be focusing on a few aspects of each city’s infrastructure and they will be the ones I used or saw the most often. So while I feel this list will be valid in the aspects it deals with it certainly won’t be an exhaustive look at each city. One example would be that I will not be judging the cities hospitals or health care systems because I did not use each cities health care facilities in fact I used very few of them. Similarly I am not an expert on the electrical grids, factory layouts or emergency services (fire, police, and ambulances) of these cities. So really this piece is meant more to be part of a fun series just for me to judge the cities I lived in based on my experiences as opposed to an academic evaluation and assessment of each city’s infrastructure. 

Transportation

One of the most important parts of every cities infrastructure is its roads and transportation services. For me each city’s transportation system sticks out very clearly because I relied on them heavily. I am a person who has not had or driven a car since 2005 so everywhere I've lived in the past 10 years is a place I have had to rely on the public transportation system of that city. So when I judge these cities transportation systems I am focusing on their public transportation rather than just on the quality of their roads and the amount of traffic they have.

So here are the rankings of the cities I've lived in based on the best transportation system:

1. Seoul: Seoul may not have great weather but its transportation system is amazing. Seoul has a great train system that can get you all over the city. Most of the trains provide a lot of seating and space for standing and are kept quite clean. But what really pushes Seoul to the top of this list are the buses. You can get to almost any place in the city by using only two buses. The have a colored system with three types of buses. Green for neighborhood buses that travel short routes to yellow buses that cover a larger area more like a city or suburb size to red buses which are for long distance travel and have fewer stops than the green and yellow buses. The red buses have great seating. They are large seats all facing forward with four in each row, two on each side of the aisle. For those in America it is basically like a big Greyhound bus. The other great thing about Seoul’s transportation system is it is fairly inexpensive compared to most of the other cities. The buses are pretty cheap with green buses being the cheapest and red ones being the most expensive. But one of the things I loved was that when you pay to get on the bus or train you are given one free transfer to another bus. So basically paying once can gets you two buses and like I said with two buses you can get almost anywhere in the city.
2. London: Of all the cities I've lived in London has the largest and most extensive transportation system. You really can get anywhere you want here without needing a car and you can get there at almost any time. The buses come almost every 10 to 15 minutes during the day, even more frequently during peak hours and the trains depart every few minutes. I've never had to wait more than 7 minutes for a train. In fact it is often much better to use the public transportation rather than a car due to traffic and parking issues that come with using a car. Now there are a few things that make me place London after Seoul even though its system is larger. First is the price of traveling in London is really expensive. The bus prices are okay but you have to pay for each bus individually so if you need to take two buses to get somewhere you have to pay full price for each bus unlike in Seoul where you get that one free transfer. The trains are really expensive. The city is divided into zones and the number of zones your travel determines the price of your trip so the more zones you go through the more expensive it gets. Also the time you travel matters because during peak times (rush hour) when most people are going to and from work the price increases. For me to get downtown to spend time with Priya I have to use one bus and a train that crosses 4 zones. That trip ends up costing me between 4 to 6 pounds one way and then the same coming home. One day of travel in London using the train or buses once or twice can quickly cost you over 10 pounds ($16). Another downside to London’s system is a lot of it is very old especially the trains. What this means is a lot of the trains are not that nice. Many of them are just dirty because they have been used so much. The seats are stained, the floors are all scuffed and scratched up and many of the walls have graffiti on them or things carved into them. Perhaps the worst part of having an old train is that there is no sort of temperature control in the trains meaning there is no heating or air conditioning. During the cold months it isn't so bad because once the train is full it gets warm but during the summer those trains get hot and everyone is sweating and people’s smells just all mix together there underground and it isn't nice. The buses have the same issues as the trains in that many of them are just dirty and there is no sort of temperature control so they are hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  Still despite these complaints London has a transportation system that can get you anywhere you need to be and it will get you there fairly quickly.
3. Shenzhen: Shenzhen has some of the most modern trains and buses of any of the cities I've lived in. Their trains are large, comfortable, clean and air conditioned. There buses are also quite nice. But unlike London and Seoul their bus system did not encompass the whole city. There were certain places that you had to use a taxi to get to but there weren't many. The fact is Shenzhen is a fairly small city, by Chinese standards, and you could tell a lot of their transportation system was new and thus also a bit limited. Also the trains did not run all day their services ended at midnight and while that might sound pretty late to most folks when you are working at a job that doesn't finish until after 10pm and then you want to grab some dinner and do a little grocery shopping before you jump on the train the time can be a little tight. I did miss out on the train one or two times and had to get a taxi home from work. Now Shenzhen was right next to Hong Kong and once you cross that border into Hong Kong you will find another wonderful transportation system of trains and buses that can get you anyway in the city at any time of day.
4. Los Angeles: LA is not known for its amazing public transportation system and there is a reason, it doesn't have one. Now I will say L.A. system is better than I expected when I went there and better than I think most people realize. L.A. has the largest train system of any of the U.S. cities I've lived in. If you are near a train station they are great but they aren't spread all over the city they way stations are in Seoul or London. L.A. does have a lot of buses but they don’t come that frequently so you really need to know your bus schedule. The trains are nice for getting to the beaches and major tourist sites. Perhaps the best thing about L.A. transportation system is that if you have to walk a bit or wait awhile you are almost always doing it in nice sunny weather.
5. Oakland: Oakland uses the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train. There are 5 trains you can use to get around the bay area. If you are near one of the trains and need to get somewhere near another station than the trains are great the problem is that they are very limited in where they go so you have to rely on the buses to get you anywhere in the actual city. The train was nice for going from Oakland to San Francisco but for the most part unless you had longer distance to travel the train didn't do a ton. The buses were okay but nothing amazing still they worked.
6. Denver: Denver has been developing a train system, which was not there when I was growing up. During the times I have lived in Denver as an adult I have found the trains to be decent. You can go north and south or east and west into the city along the freeways but besides that the trains don’t go out into the suburbs much. The buses in Denver are not great in that they just don’t come by that often. Again if you are right downtown than everything is fine but out in the suburbs you have to know the bus schedule or you can get stuck waiting an hour for a bus.
7. Seattle: Seattle has lots of buses but not much of a train system. When I was there I think they had one or two train lines neither of which helped me where I lived. They do have a fair amount of buses and if you work during normal business hours the buses come around fairly frequently during those peak traveling times. But if you want to go out for the night you need to be careful because the buses don’t run all night and you can get stuck somewhere you don’t want to be with no bus to get you home. And of course if you get stuck waiting for a bus in Seattle there is a good chance you’ll be waiting in the rain.
8. Sacramento: Sacramento has a small train system but it was of no help to me and their bus system was very limited. I had to do a lot of walking just to get to a bus stop and then I had to know right when I had to be there or I would miss the bus and it often took multiple buses (3 or more) to get where I needed to go.
9. Phoenix: Of all the cities I've lived in Phoenix is probably the one whose public transportation system I used the least. This was in part due to the fact that I could still drive when I lived there so even though I didn't always have my own car I could borrow one from friends. Also I was going to university the city (Tempe) was designed around the campus so a majority of the stuff I wanted was within walking distance. I didn't go into downtown Phoenix that often. But the times I did use the buses in Phoenix I found there routes to be limited and their frequency to be very low. Things might have changed since I last lived there in 2005 but at that time it was not a good place to be without a car.

Before going on one will notice that I ranked all the foreign cities I've lived in as the best for public transportation and that was easy because no American city came even close to offering all the public transit that these cities did. So the gap between number 3. Shenzhen and number 4. LA  is large. After that ranking the US cities was a little difficult because the fact is most of the cities I lived in didn't have great public transit especially if you weren't living right in the middle of downtown. So while I still rank the cities the distinctions are not nearly as large as the one between the American and foreign cities. 

Cleanliness

Next I will rank the cleanliness of each city. What makes a city clean or dirty? There are of course numerous factors which include their waste management system, how often the trash is picked up, where the trash is placed, how various public places are taken care of or maintained, how businesses take care of their property but ultimately the cleanliness of a city comes down to the people in it. If the people in the city throw away their trash in the right places and clean up after themselves and their pets than for the most part the city is clean but sadly many people in many cities just can’t seem to do this. So let’s go ahead and rank cleanliness of the cities I've lived in from cleanest to dirtiest.

1. Seattle: When one steps back and just looks at Seattle it really is a beautiful city and the people there tend to take care of their city. Now while I don’t like the weather I do believe the constant rain does help Seattle be cleaner than it might otherwise be. If little things get tossed on the ground they are often washed away into a storm drain and the streets are left clear. Also the rain really helps dissipate any bad odors that might otherwise linger in any given spot. Considering how much plant life (trees, bushes, flowers, etc) exist in Seattle it really would be easy for a lot more litter to build up but for most part it doesn't  So I must give kudos to Seattle for staying clean.
2. Sacramento: Sacramento is not the most beautiful of cities but it is clean. The streets are clean, the buses stay clean and the parks are clean. This might be in part because it is the capital of California and they want to maintain a good image but who really cares why when the fact is it is clean.
3. Denver: Similar to Seattle Denver is a lovely place and the people there seem to know it and try and take care of it. Denver does a good job of picking up the trash frequently and providing convenient places to throw away your garbage whenever you’re walking around. One of the big problems that Denver faces is smog from the cars and factories in the area. Due to the mountains the smog can actually build up like it is stuck in a bowl so some days when you looked out over the city there would be a thick cloud of exhaust. Not the prettiest of sights.
4. Phoenix: Now Phoenix might not come across as very clean to many people. Part of the reason for that is simply the fact that a majority of the landscape is made up of dirt, sand and rocks. If you throw a little wind into the equation it won’t be long before cars, buildings, streets and sidewalks are covered with sand and dust. Still I found that as far as actual litter goes the city wasn't that bad. I lived next to the university so there were certainly days, after parties or football games, when there would be a lot of debris and litter lying around but I felt that stuff got cleaned up fairly quickly considering how much of it there was. Also most businesses did a good job of keeping their store fronts clean.
5. Los Angeles: L.A. is a weird mixture of immaculately clean and sadly dirty depending on where you are in the city. Like most places when you are in the richer neighborhoods things look nicer than when you are in the poorer neighborhoods but I found the contrast between these places to be quite extreme in LA compared to a lot of other cities. Similar to Phoenix the natural landscape included a lot of dust and sand though much of LA has been designed and covered with plants from other places in order to make it look pretty. The beaches themselves are a place where you get an odd mixture of clean and dirty. There were many times I would be at the beach and see people just throw trash on the ground despite the fact that there was a trash can less than 20 feet away but then I would often see people come along and pick up that same trash and throw it away even though it was not theirs. Part of the issue LA has is just how large and spread out it is. The larger the city gets usually the more difficult it becomes to maintain its cleanliness. Then of course there is the issue of pollution particularly from the cars. There are a lot of days when the cloud of smog over LA is just disgusting to look at and there is really nothing you can do except go on with your day and perhaps wonder how much of that junk you are actually breathing into your lungs. Overall I would say LA is okay but certainly not great when it comes to being clean.
6. Oakland: Of all the US cities I've lived in Oakland was the dirtiest. I don’t know why that was but when you walked around Oakland there was just more litter and garbage lying around than in any of the other cities. There was a lot of graffiti on buildings and overpasses that just made those places seem dirtier. The trains and buses were not cleaned up frequently enough for my taste. There would be cups, newspapers, food wrappers and things like that lying on seats all the time.  Oakland is an okay town but it certainly isn’t a clean one.
7. Seoul: Seoul is the second largest city I've lived in and that fact alone makes it no surprise that it isn’t the cleanest city in the world. Now similar to LA the contrast between the clean areas and the dirty areas was quite drastic. Almost all the public places in Seoul, including the trains and buses were kept quite nice. You could tell there were people taking care of these places. But when you got into the neighborhoods where people lived things could quickly change and you’d find yourself walking around large piles of garbage bags on the street or just litter lying on the ground. In the neighborhoods there were a lot of small alley ways in between the buildings and many of these allies just stunk, particularly in the summer, as they were filled with rotting food and stuff like that. They did have a constant flow of dump trucks but the fact is there were just so many people that the trash built up a lot faster than it was being taken away. I also noticed that the culture was just different there than in America. Often the older generations there seemed to have no problem throwing things on the ground, spitting on the sidewalk or whipping their nose with their hands right before grabbing a door handle you want to use. There were just a lot of smaller things like that which stuck out to me. So I would say Seoul deserves to be towards the bottom of this list.
8. Shenzhen: I’m not actually sure if Shenzhen deserves to be under Seoul or not. Almost everything I complained about with Seoul happened in Shenzhen. Public places were clean but allies and neighborhoods just weren't  I think part of the reason I put Shenzhen lower is that the entrance to my apartment building was through a back alley and a majority of the time I walked through there I would hold my breathe due to all the horrible smells coming from the garbage that was just thrown outside along with all the small restaurants and the smells of their cooking. The constant heat is another thing that did not help Shenzhen especially when it came to bad odors. The trash outside was just baking in the sun and that created lots of strange and bad smells. Again Shenzhen perhaps could be above Seoul but only because it is a smaller city not because it is really that different. 
9. London: Before I moved to London Priya told me it was a fairly dirty city and I admit I didn't think much of that at the time I just figured it’s a big city so that is no surprise. But when I got here I was shocked to find out just how dirty it was. London is a huge city so like I said that instantly makes it more difficult to keep clean but the sheer amount of litter and garbage just lying around on the streets is sickening. I really don’t like going on walks in my neighborhood because it just feels like a dirty place. There is junk everywhere. The buses, particularly the smaller ones, are not nice the floors are often sticky with some spilled soda or fruit juice and there are wrappers and junk all over them. The trains are not very clean in part because they are old but also because people just don’t seem to care about throwing their trash away in the proper places. When you are in the middle of downtown things aren't as bad. There are a lot more trash receptacles to throw stuff away in and a lot of the people are tourist and I think they don’t want to litter in a city they don’t live in. But really everywhere else just feels dirty. It’s really hard to explain how bad it can be here if you haven’t been here but there is hardly a day I get home when I haven’t stepped on something sticky. There is also a lot of pollution from the cars. When you get home and blow your nose you will discover a lot of black and grey stuff has come out of your nose. It’s not nice. I have developed the habit of instantly washing my hands when I get home particularly when I've been on the trains or buses and I can tell you they do get dirty. 

You might have noticed that all the US cities ranked ahead of the foreign cities in regards to their cleanliness and I think one of the big reasons for that is the car. In the US more people use cars than public transportation or walking so I think a lot of the trash people produce in those cities ends up in their cars rather than on the streets as is often the problem in the cities that have more pedestrians and superior transportation systems. This is of course not the only factor but it is one that I think is worth noting.

Public Parks

As someone who enjoys walking not just to get somewhere but in order to relax I often went to parks or trails that the cities had. Each city approached their park system differently some of the cities were able to rely on the natural landscape while others had to create their parks from scratch. Places like Seattle and Denver often didn't make their parks as much as block off certain areas from being developed. But places like London and Seoul had to truly construct their parks in the middle of highly developed areas.  So here’s my list based on all my walks in the various parks in these various cities.

1. Denver: The mountains give Denver a large advantage over other areas because so much of the work has already been done for them by nature. There are numerous hikes and trails that cut through the city as well as just blocked off parks that make Denver a really fun place to walk around.
2. London: London has more parks than I would have ever expected. The ones downtown are particularly lovely. They are well constructed and filled with lovely trees, flowers and animals most of which are native to England.
3. Seoul: Seoul did a great job of giving people nice parks to walk and relax in. I lived in Ilsan and they had a park called Lake Park which was just beautiful. I spent a lot of my free time there. Google it and you’ll find some great pictures of it.
4. Seattle: It is not hard for Seattle to make nice parks. With the beautiful forests they are able to make some great places to walk around in. Besides London it is probably the best place to see a lot of flowers in bloom. 
5. Los Angeles: LA has small mountains in the east and tons of beaches on the coast. Really it is hard to beat walking along the beach in LA. The weather is great, the wind is fresh and it is simply beautiful. But LA does not have a lot of parks inside the city itself so you must rely on the naturally beautiful places around the area, which I assure you are not lacking.
6. Shenzhen: I lived near the some mountains by the coast and they had some great trails to hike. When you got to the peak you could see out over the whole city to the north as well as look south and see Hong Kong. Inside the city there were some nice parks though nothing I would call spectacular.  
7. Sacramento: Sacramento has a lot of parks most of which are planned and constructed. They are not based on any of the natural vegetation and while they are nice most of them are kind of cookie cutter copies of each other.
8. Phoenix: The natural environment of Phoenix makes creating parks difficult. Parks filled with sand, dirt and cacti are nice at first but can get old. The places where the city has created green parks you can tell they don’t really belong there and I can only guess how much it costs in money and water to keep those places in existence.
9. Oakland: There just aren't any parks worth mentioning. You can go to the bay and look out at San Francisco but even that is not much of a view.  Oakland is mostly just a big city of concrete. You can go north up towards Berkeley or south towards San Jose and find some nice areas but that requires some travel and takes you well outside of the city.

Water

Here I am ranking the tap water of each city. When it comes to the drinking water I can say that for the most part I want my water filtered no matter what city I am in but you end up using the tap water in all the cities for numerous things including showers, washing the dishes, washing your clothes and other things and some water just ends up being better than others. I'm not going to spend time trying to describe distinctions between the cities but there were enough differences that I could make a list.  

1. Sacramento
2. Seattle
3. Denver
4. London
5. Phoenix
6. Los Angeles
7. Oakland
8. Seoul
9. Shenzhen

So judging these cities based on their infrastructure ended up being a lot more difficult that judging them merely by the weather. Unlike with the weather the categories don’t all match up giving one city a clear edge. Here the cities with the best transportation weren't the most clean and such so this list took a lot more thought. So here’s how I would rank them overall based only on their infrastructure.

1. Seoul:
   
   It is hard to beat Seoul based solely on their transportation system and while it certainly was not the cleanest city it was clean where it counted the most, which was in large public areas and on the trains and buses. Seoul is a city that is well run, easy to get around in and provides a lot of lovely parks to play in.
2. Denver:
   
   While Denver certainly does not have a great public transportation system it is decent for an American city in the west and it is hard to beat Denver when it comes to parks and places to hike. It is a beautiful city and it is clean.
3. London:
   
   Part of me wants to drop London even lower than third but I can’t because when it comes to transportation and the basic running of the city it is hard to do any better than London has done. The major problem with London really is how dirty it is. It is difficult to monitor and clean up after so many people but still so much of London is just gross so I dropped them from the top two spots.
4. Seattle:
   
   I put Seattle here because similar to Denver it has great parks and is quite clean. I put it below Denver because I feel its transportation system is slightly lower than Denver’s and while it has wonderful parks and trails it rains so much that access to those parks and trails is more limited than in Denver.
5. Shenzhen:
   
   Like the other two non-American cities Shenzhen is superior in its transportation but falls short in its cleanliness. I put it above the rest of the American cities because ultimately the transportation system was the most important part of the infrastructure of each city for my daily life. And while it didn't have the best parks and was a bit dirty than a normal American city it remained clean in the most important places, just like Seoul, on the buses, trains and in public areas.
6. Sacramento:
   
   Sacramento is a clean, well run city but the transportation system is not good and the parks are pretty boring.
7. Los Angeles:
   
   LA is just a tough place to get around in that being said I loved it there especially for going on walks. If you have a car you will rarely find a day without significant traffic issues but when using the public transportation system you can get around to a lot of the major areas without much of a headache.
8. Phoenix:
   
   I really do like Phoenix but as far as getting around without a car and just the overall cleanliness of the town it drops to the bottom of my list.
9. Oakland:
   
   Oakland belongs at the bottom of this list. Its public transportation is okay but in every other area it falls short and is not a place that I would consider well run. 

On my next list I'll rank the cities based on social and cultural things such as tourist sites, shopping areas, restaurants, museums and generally just things to do