Berwyn isn't Chicago.

Wicker Park, Uky Village, and Bucktown are all essentially the same neighborhood --- they're adjacent, clustered, and only a few square miles; they're Chicago's version of SOMA or Greenwich Village. And yet they're tree-lined (right now, they're covered in fall canopy), and every street there has an alleyway, where the trash goes.

NYC and SF are dirty in large part because they are poorly planned.

I don't know why you think Noe Valley is covered in poo, though. Noe Valley seems no more or less filthy than the nicer areas of the Castro.

I found that observation a bit odd. The part about North Beach being clean was also a bit suspicious. Whenever people make blanket claims about how dirty SF is, I wonder if they've ever been to the western half of the city.

If Noe Valley is covered in poo, at least it's dog poo.

My point was, I lived in really crappy SF, I lived in hipster urban SF, and I lived in residential SF, and they were all filthy.

This is the first thing that I noticed when visiting New York for the first time. The place stunk, because the sidewalk was half for garbage and half for pedestrians. I just couldn't believe it.

(Pittsburgh is like this too. I remember having to literally move boxes of garbage away from the doorway to a restaurant to get inside. Not a great way to start your meal. The food ended up being bad, too, and I got a big piece of paper mixed in with my food. I don't think I ate anything for the rest of that conference...)

Anyway, Chicago has its problems, but it is certainly nice-looking and well-designed. I have not visited anywhere else in the US that is as clean.

(Tokyo and Copenhagen are similarly clean, though. Even Hong Kong is better than New York.)

The other big problem with SF is the parking. Horrendous. And yes, many of the people there do seem to spend a great deal of time in an advanced state of self-congratulation.