San Asqueroso

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal had a story on how the citizens of San Francisco's Tenderloin district (so known because of the cut of meat, not because of the clientele that visits the area) are up in arms about improving the area. You heard that right. They like the squalor that they live in, and who are you to plant trees or try to improve the area. What's the reasoning behind this? A misguided idea of how being a dangerous trashheap gives the area "character." By the same reasoning you could claim that the smell in Fuji gives that town character or that the raw sewage pumped into the East River gives New York a certain flair (although in fairness to the Greatest City in the World, they stopped that years ago because people do care about that city). From the Journal:

In San Francisco's Tenderloin, residents aren't fighting the usual gentrification battle over displacing low-income families. Instead, they are fighting for the neighborhood's gritty ambience.

Often described by tourist guides as San Francisco's worst neighborhood, the Tenderloin has for years been a gathering point for pimps, drug addicts and transvestites and transgender residents, some of whom work as prostitutes. Some residents say that's what gives the Tenderloin its personality and makes it a crucial piece of San Francisco's diverse cityscape. Cleanup efforts, these residents contend, threaten to destroy an atmosphere that welcomes people on the fringe of society, who otherwise could find no refuge. And it distracts from the issues the neighborhood really cares about, such as safety for sex workers and affordable housing.

This isn't entirely unprecedented. A few New Yorkers are still fighting for gritty, sex strewn Times Square and lots of people are fighting to have New Orleans return to the crime dump that it was before Katrina instead of having it be a place where you are, you know, safe. What is it that goes through people's minds? I understand that you want to live where you want to live, but nobody's saying that you can't. Instead they're saying that you should get rid of high crime low value areas. Instead of blowing it up and starting over, pushing out the pimps and the CHUDs might be a good start. Maybe you could plant some trees, reface a building or two, and start sweeping the streets.