From the overview of the “What Makes Paris Look like Paris?” study:
Consider the two photographs [above], both downloaded from Google Street View. One comes from Paris, the other one from London. Can you tell which is which? Surprisingly, even for these nondescript street scenes, people who have been to Europe tend to do quite well on this task.
In an informal survey, we presented 11 subjects with 100 random Street View images of which 50% were from Paris, and the rest from eleven other cities. We instructed the subjects (who have all been to Paris) to try and ignore any text in the photos, and collected their binary forced-choice responses (Paris / Not Paris).
On average, subjects were correct 79% of the time (std = 6.3), with chance at 50% (when allowed to scrutinize the text, performance for some subjects went up as high as 90%). What this suggests is that people are remarkably sensitive to the geographically-informative features within the visual environment. But what are those features?
In informal debriefings, our subjects suggested that for most images, a few localized, distinctive elements “immediately gave it away”. E.g. for Paris, things like windows with railings, the particular style of balconies, the distinctive doorways, the traditional blue/green/white street signs, etc. were particularly helpful.
Having developed an algorithm to identify the key geo-informative features for a paricular place from a large database of random Street View photographs, the researchers extracted the key elements for a number of cities, including San Francisco:
Apparently it’s bay windows, cheap aluminum windows, poured steps, paneled garage doors and SUVs that makes San Francisco look like San Francisco.
∙ What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? [cmu.edu]
∙ The Paris/Not Paris Test [cmu.edu]
Unfortunately, San Francisco is still in America, and is still victim of the tacky lifestyles that people push here.
Score 91.
I knew roughly 1/2 of the parisian places shown and the rest was a guess. A few SF, Barcelona, London, Prague, Milano…
The first Paris/notParis photo I was presented with was a parking lot in SOMA. I doubt I could beat lol’s score and am too lazy to take the whole test anyways.
It is kind of sad that a big part of SF’s personality is garage doors and parked cars but that’s an aspect of American cities in general. Ironically many suburban streetviews don’t include so many cars and garages since they’re hidden deeper in the lot.
I’m also surprised that “naked dude” didn’t make it higher in the list of defining characteristics of the SF street scene.
Some of these are really hard to figure. Some are easier. Lots of fun.
#1 is indeed in SOMA
#5 is somewhere in the older central Paris (Marais or Latin Quarter)
#6 is the side entrance to the Forum des Halles
#10 could be a parking lot in a Paris suburb except there are 3 old VW Beetles, making it Latin America, probably Mexico.
#12 is typical of storefronts you’ll find in the Sentier garment quarter
#13 is across from the Termes de Cluny, old roman ruins
#14 is probably in Prague (too much cheesy fluff on the second floor)
#16 shows “TAITBOUT” which is a common name in Paris for everything insurance and wealth management (I used to work in Rue Taitbout 20 years ago)
#18 shows a coded entrance typical to Paris
etc…
Love it. Thanks editor!
Victorian-style windows, boring garage doors, and SUVs. Got it.
am surprised san francisco didn’t show a homeless man pooping on the sidewalk
^ Or a boomer aged white person frothing at the mouth over the idea that his neighbor chose a non conforming hue of sky blue for the trim on his victorian.
Parked cars are a big part of the Paris streetscape, too, once you’re off the arterial streets. They’re parked on the curb, on the sidewalk, in the crosswalk, parallel, cross-wise, you name it. And don’t forget the abundant doggy poo, which is really hard to see at night. Yet I love Paris. (and San Francisco!)
Interesting thing I read (somewhere else) about this study: the computer could only reliably identify two cities in the US, those being SF and NYC. All the rest just look too similar/generic.
^^^Yes, yes, we know. One of the unique defining characteristics about San Frrancisco is how it loves to talk about how unique it is compared to other cities”. “all the rest just look too similar/generic”….tell THAT to New Orleans, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., etc. Those cities all look so much alike and are so “generic”.
Give me a BREAK! Will the civic narcissism of San Francisco ever end?
This is a verbatim quote from the paper itself:
“It is also interesting to note that, on the whole, the algorithm had more trouble with American cities: it was able to discover only a few geo-informative elements, and some of them turned out to be different brands of cars, road tunnels, etc. This might be explained by the relative lack of stylistic coherence and uniqueness in American cities (with its melting pot of styles and influences), as well as the supreme reign of the automobile on American streets.”
Automobiles are also everywhere in Parisian streets, in a city that was developed before the invention of the automobile. Fortunately the Boulevards were constructed with open space in mind. People in carriages wanted fresh air and a pretty sight, on their way to their castle-inspired neo-classic manses with standard features (Haussmann specified balconies at floors 3 and 6, 2-floor high carriage entrance, 7th floor recessed by 1 meter or so, tin roof at a standard angle). Also Haussmann in his work often managed to create a nice perspective towards a monument, sometimes commissioning the monument himself. Driving in Paris outside of rush hour can be really pleasant.
anon, it seems to me you cherry picked the handful of cities that are NOT generic. James was in all likelihood talking about other large population cities that weren’t on your list and that, yes, are very alike looking.
We Americans crave homogeneity. It is the reason for the look-alike shopping malls and chain stores. It is why Faux Tuscans are being built in almost every city and state in this country, even in the flatland frozen landscape of the midwest.
Odd how freedom of choice leads to a loss of local character.
And on that other thread about the silo house we lambast a creative albeit unusual design. Even here in free thinking open minded San Francisco.
Give me a BREAK! Will the civic narcissism of San Francisco ever end?
Then what would distinguish us?
Imagine if, in anon’s list of distinctive cities, the following were cited instead:
• Houston
• Phoenix
• San Jose
• Jacksonville, FL
…would anyone hesitate to describe the downtowns of these cities are “generic” and exhibiting “a relative lack of stylistic coherence and uniqueness”?
And all of them have larger populations than San Francisco.
@Brahma, what is interesting about your list is that it makes me wonder if we are not trying too hard not convince ourselves that everyone would live in a San Francisco if they could. Could it be most people cannot give up their car addiction and have no desire to live here?
I know people who have moved to Houston, Austin and San Antonio and the reasons had to do more with jobs and low cost of living quality of life issues than whether or not those cities offered a car free/ yoga mat under one arm / coffee shop on every corner lifestyle.
The dirty secret is that the vast majority of Americans LOVE their cars, and have no desire to peddle in skinny jeans and plaid shirts to work. Of course we like to think of San Francisco as the city that is “different”, and therefore what goes in other cities would not work here, BUT is that the truth?
Take Noe Valley, the hottest neighborhood in the city, it has a desnsity more similar to inner ring suburbs in Los Angeles than it does to what most people call a “city”. Is Noe Valley popular because of its density and architecture, OR, is it popular because of it’s single family homes WITH garages who have close proximity to FREEWAYS. It could just be that cash rich car driving real estate buyers in San Francisco have the same requirements for housing as a suburban Houstonian.
I am originally a Chicagoan and in that city the highest per square foot cost for real estate is directly in the center of the city (right around the water tower plaza). In Chicago the further you get away from the center the less expensive it gets for housing, so a neighborhood like Noe Valley would be very inexpensive since most Chicagoans do not want garages and single family homes, but instead want to live in the walkable center of the action. Most neighborhoods in San Francisco remind me of inner suburbs instead of city neighborhoods.
^Are you seriously claiming that Noe Valley has the highest per square foot cost for real estate in SF? LOL.
Nope, just said that Noe real estate is very active and desirable. VERY affluent property buyers in San Francisco seem to dream for the same thing as most other suburban Americans and that is why Noe went from being a sleepy neighborhood to one of the hottest in the city.
1.)single family homes
2.)quiet safe streets (Some with trees)
3.)PARKING (garage hopefully)
4.)Backyards
5.)Easy access to roads for work commute and travel.
This “wish list” for many buyers is not my idea of what city living is all about, and that is why I question whether a city lifestyle is as desirable as some would claim. It is shocking to read how fast Houston, Dallas and Atlanta are growing and it is not because of high paying jobs or car free lifestyles.
My wish list would be:
Very close to shops and restaurants to supply my needs without having to use a car.
Close enough to work that I can ride bike or take transit.
NOT living in a single family home.
Enjoying the energy of a city neighborhood with density.
Re highest psf costs – My guess is northern Russian Hill and parts of Pacific and Presidio Heights would be the highest psf cost in the city, but I am not a realtor so I do not know.
Ok, so why are you comparing Noe to the area of Chicago with the highest per square foot cost per real estate? You’re comparing two totally different things, and then drawing some bizarre conclusions from that faulty comparison.
I’d be nice if someone who’s a real estate agent could post what the official SFAR definition of “hot neighborhood” is.
In my layman’s mind, a “hot neighborhood” is one that doesn’t necessarily have the highest per square foot cost, but rather that properties listed are closing quickly after listing (i.e., demand is readily available) and for “over asking” (yes, with all the caveats that apply to that phrase) and that closing prices on an apples-to-apples basis are on a definite upward trend. You’d be looking at a derivative.
If you had a neighborhood with the highest per square foot costs, but very few closings per year, and prices either lower than or at asking (e.g., District 7B), would professionals call that neighborhood “hot”? I ask that sincerely.
anon3, I think you’re on to something regarding not-so-car-dependent urban lifestyles not being something that’s as widely valued by Americans as the conventional wisdom would have us believe. I think that the folks here who like to cite Ryan Avent’s book would add, however, that’s it not just lifestyle choice (yoga mat under one arm / coffee shop on every corner/viable bicycle commuting).
Since comparable real estate is so much less expensive in cities like Phoenix, where the median home costs about a third as much, someone who’s become established in their line of work can move to one of the cities I mentioned, even taking a pay cut, and still increase their standard of living, and that’s still true if you control for being car dependent in either location.
When I read Brahma’s “is it popular because of it’s single family homes WITH garages who have close proximity to FREEWAYS. ” my answer struck me intuitively that it was true although I had never had that thought myself.
One clue, there seem to me to be a lot of vehicles there that are popular with suburbanites: SUV’s in particular. Car-wise, it looks like Pleasanton.
Brian, to be fair, the point about Noe being “desirable” due to it featuring elements commonly found in car-oriented suburbs was due to anon3.
Just a coincidence, there’s an article in today’s Chronicle about people in the Bayview district routinely parking on sidewalks, presumably because they don’t have adequate garage parking for their cars like the homeowners in Noe. Meter Maids would never get away with allowing such behavior in the hoity toity people’s neighborhoods.
“Nope, just said that Noe real estate is very active and desirable. VERY affluent property buyers in San Francisco seem to dream for the same thing as most other suburban Americans and that is why Noe went from being a sleepy neighborhood to one of the hottest in the city.
1.)single family homes
2.)quiet safe streets (Some with trees)
3.)PARKING (garage hopefully)
4.)Backyards
5.)Easy access to roads for work commute and travel.”
Exactly right — anon3 is very much onto something that a lot of people don’t recognize. San Franciscans love to talk about urbanism in their narcissistic rants about how unique we are, but in reality “the San Francisco dream” is a bunch of single family homes, rather than the actual density of an urban environment. If you talk about achiving actual density, SF NIMBYs complain about Manhattanization.
The following statement by anon3 rings true in its comparison:
Take Noe Valley, the hottest neighborhood in the city, it has a desnsity more similar to inner ring suburbs in Los Angeles than it does to what most people call a “city”.
Ironically, it means that many San Franciscans have true suburban-style commutes too.
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with all of this, but it’s just to point out that rhetoric doesn’t always meet reality.
sfrenegade is right.
Our friends in bigger cities, especially but not only NYC and Paris, always comment on how many of us San Franciscans live in single family houses with (small) gardens even in the northern urban areas.
The reason so many people living in apartments in NY and Paris have second homes is so they can have “normal” life for part of the year.
sfrenegades’ numbers 1 to 4 are the things most people want.
Only the extreme liberals think that depriving people of garages will make the wish go away. What it does is make garages available only to the rich. The “social experiment” so-beloved by Commissioner Moore will be a failure, punishing the poorer people while enhancing the lives of the rich.
Just as the “congestion charge” in London made the ordinary people give up their cars and the streets clearer for the rich.
It isn’t surprising that as demand for a resource exceeds its supply then its price rises. And as things get expensive it affects the poor more than the wealthy.
But that isn’t a good reason to require the government to provide an unlimited supply of road capacity in a dense city. If the city tried to satisfy the demand it would be unable to grow.
Only the extreme liberals think that depriving people of garages will make the wish go away. What it does is make garages available only to the rich. The “social experiment” so-beloved by Commissioner Moore will be a failure, punishing the poorer people while enhancing the lives of the rich.
Right, this is much more about, “I got mine, you can’t have yours.”
It isn’t surprising that as demand for a resource exceeds its supply then its price rises. And as things get expensive it affects the poor more than the wealthy.
But that isn’t a good reason to require the government to provide an unlimited supply of road capacity in a dense city. If the city tried to satisfy the demand it would be unable to grow.
But that’s a strawman. What SF needs to grow is to get more dense because we can easily increase supply when the city is full of single family homes. Upzoning major corridors and having the changes cascade to surrounding blocks appropriately can do that, and so can changes in planning that aren’t based on NIMBYism.
The car problem that people are fabricating will handle itself, as it has in other cities. You don’t need to artificially constrain cars, thereby helping the rich who can afford expensive garages to drive around on empty roads. It’ll happen on its own when the internalized price of car ownership goes up organically. There are enough people who want to live the urban lifestyle instead of the suburban lifestyle who’d welcome such changes in SF.
The problem with expecting street congestion to reach equilibrium on its own is that it doesn’t negatively impact just car drivers, it impacts everyone on the street. Not only does auto travel slow down but everything slows down. Especially buses which need to constantly exit and reenter the travel lane at bus stops.
The interactions on a street network are complex and don’t fit into a simple economic style model of demand rising causing costs to rise causing demand to retreat. In this case demand rises causing congestion which degrades the experience of everyone on the street. It makes traveling by car annoying and makes Muni suck even more severely. It can actually have the effect of making transit less attractive compared to driving.
“Just as the “congestion charge” in London made the ordinary people give up their cars and the streets clearer for the rich.”
Wouldn’t this mean ultimately only 1% of the cars will be on the street?
The congestion charge also allows ordinary people to drive into the city at a reasonable cost when they need it, and have a very decent driving experience.
I think this is a win-win system. People living in central London (who overwhelmingly use fantastic public transit anyway) can enjoy a city with less cars. The city collects funds and releases pressure on its own tax payers. Some car-centric suburbanites will suffer, but suburban transit is pretty well developed.
London, Paris, New York, we do sure seem to think very highly of ourselves. With our ONE central underground subway line, and most of the city unserved by rapid rail or rapid bus transit, we sit in wooden structures with applied exterior ornamentation and think we have a European City lifestyle, as Google vans idle outside and parking enforcement vehicles write tickets for autos 3″ over the curb line in front of someone’s private garage.
With the majority of the population and jobs over 20 miles to the south, we think that the best thing we can do for growth in the city is to pretend we are living in Knightsbridge or the Mid Manhattan and to copy auto restriction policies that have no place in a city like San Francisco with so little congestion and so little decent public transit. As was mentioned above, the only winners will be the 1% who can afford their private garages, traffic free roads (where is the traffic in this city to compare to any of the big cities everyone compares us to?) and drives down 280 to work.
^On what planet are the majority of Bay Area jobs and population 20 miles south of SF? The center of both of those would be in the East Bay.
Amazing how many folks here forget that there are more people living east of SF than there are south of it. The center of the universe is not Silicon Valley, no matter how much you think it might be.
anon, on this planet. You can argue with “majority” because SM and SC counties don’t outstrip all the rest of the counties combined, but they certainly have more jobs than any other Bay Area region, including the East Bay. 1.15M workers in Alameda and CC Counties combined, 1.4M in SM and SC combined. See tons of detailed data at the name link.
How is the 40 miles from central SM to central SC counties more of a “region” than the 10 miles from downtown SF to downtown Oakland? That’s some bizarre stretching of boundaries to prove your point.