America's Cleanest Cities

I have not had the fortune of spending much if any time in most of the cities making this list. Most of the cities I have been in the last two decades are quite dirty and lacking in beauty and cleanliness. Freeways and roads lined with litter, trash, waste, and weeds; rampant grafitti; little if any attempt to maximize the placement of trees, shrubs and flowers along infrastructural corridors including freeways; the use of cement walls and wood fences instead of hedges and vines to provide a more healthy and aesthetic presentation; sloping hills covered with weeds along freeway and road interchanges that are more than eyesores; and the ever present issues of air, water, and surface pollution of many and varied sources that seeming only continues to worsen. Instead of warehousing lower level criminals, all levels of law enforcement should be putting these offenders to work addressing these issues of dirtiness and filth that exist in most places, be it a town, city, suburb, rural county, or area of natural beauty that has been tainted and scarred.

The top ten cleanest cities:
1) Miami (surprising)
2) Seattle (expected)
3) Jacksonville (surprising)
4) Orlando (somewhat surprising)
5) Portland, OR (expected)
6) San Francisco (surprising)
7) Oklahoma City (shocking)
8) Tampa-St Pete (somewhat surprising)
9) Minneapolis-St Paul (expected)
10) San Jose-Sunnyvale (somewhat surprising)

Cities I would have thought would have made the list would be San Diego, Colorado Springs, Palm Springs, Fort Myers/Naples, West Palm Beach, Charleston SC, and Asheville.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/BusinessTravel/story?id=4513175&page=1

http://www.forbes.com/2008/03/17/miami-seattle-orlando-biz-logistics-cx_tvr_0317cleanest.html

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