How Los Angeles Is Using Data to Tackle Street Cleanliness

As of April, every street in Los Angeles has a number. It falls on a scale of 1 to 3, and it denotes cleanliness: 61 percent of were given a 1 and determined clean, 35 percent were somewhat tidy, and 4 percent were a 3—flat-out dirty.

These rankings, commissioned as part of L.A.’s $9.1 million Clean Streets Initiative, have a pretty clear message for Mayor Eric Garcetti: “In L.A., we just haven’t been doing a very good job,” he tells CityLab. The city has long faced problems with trash. While it may seem in okay shape now, cleanliness-wise, with 96 percent of the streets in tolerable-to-good condition, LA Independent reported that the remaining 4 percent is still significant: “It equates to 376 miles, or running a marathon each day for two weeks and seeing only streets filled with trash.”