Robespierrexvii t1_iyd12bg wrote on November 30, 2022 at 2:26 PM

I would agree that it's not a fair comparison.

However, I'm a recent transplant from the Midwest and even comparing Worcester to the smaller city I grew up in (pop 50,000) in WI it's lacking a lot of things that are very basic in all of the other cities I've lived in. Basic things like sidewalks that don't just end or have trees growing straight through the middle of them. Garbage and recycling bins at all residences, reliable public transportation, a Mayoral government etc. The list goes on. It's not that I find Worcester boring it's just incredibly dysfunctional.

These are basic things that most other places I've been in the country are just the standard and Worcester is lightyears behind even my humble hometown of Sheboygan, WI not to mention Milwaukee where I moved here from. The thing that bugs me the most is there are still people out here who consider Wisconsin "flyover country". Well to that I say at least back there I had sidewalks and trash bins. Even comparing it to a nearby city like Providence it's severely lacking in terms of basic infrastructure.

SmartSherbet t1_iyd26le wrote on November 30, 2022 at 2:34 PM

Yup. As another transplant, I can say there's plenty to like about Worcester, but we are also far behind the curve on tons of basic stuff, especially infrastructure. How a city can proclaim it's in a "renaissance" and is "up and coming" when it doesn't even provide usable sidewalks, prevent drivers from parking on the sidewalks that exist, bother to plow its ONE bike path in the winter time, or offer semi-reliable bus service is beyond me. As the previous poster said, much smaller cities in all other parts of the country have figured these things out, but Worcester just doesn't seem to care.

outb0undflight t1_iyes6yw wrote on November 30, 2022 at 9:20 PM

>Well to that I say at least back there I had sidewalks and trash bins.

The trash situation in this city is genuinely unforgivable. There's a weird dearth of public trash cans and the city's trash collection policies are fucking insane.

If you're going to insist that all my recycling goes into a bin you need to make that bin big enough to hold at least a moderate amount of recycling. If you get one item in a big box you basically cannot fit anything else in that bin. I got a new monitor on Black Friday and put the box out with my recycling today thinking, "Eh, maybe I'll get lucky and they'll pick it up." Nope. Literally stood there and watched the guys just ignore it and leave it on the ground. And they wonder why people just dump their trash.