Without addresses in San Jose, or really anywhere in Costa Rica, logistics in general are pretty much a nightmare unless you are familiar with the area. This has become blatantly obvious to me even though we have only been here for four days as my classmates and have struggled with directions for the past few days. However, the problem doesn’t just affect new visitors like ourselves, I have also noticed that it affects most Ticos. For example, Uber drivers and taxis seem to have a very hard time locating our homestays when we use them. Without actual addresses, these professional drivers must rely on their general knowledge of the main landmarks in the towns and then figure out how far the building is from these landmarks. I feel like this is an unnecessary problem for the country to have and that it is definitely holding San Jose back from growing as a city from it’s rural origins. If nothing else, adding addresses would decrease some of the traffic, which is very bad in San Jose, because less people would be driving aimlessly following directions like “an Amarillo house 50 meters from the dentist’s office.” By decreasing the traffic, efficiency with businesses would increase because shipping trucks and workers could get to the right place quicker. The tourism industry would also be able to grow because tourists would be able to get to locations quicker which would allow them to plan to visit more places and also have more time to stop local sodas and small businesses along the streets instead of stressing over the very vague directions they have to work with. While the Tico lifestyle may be fine with their current state of relaxed, often-late-to-everything lifestyle, if the rural-based city of San Jose plans to grow into a real bustling capital city, they should take this simple step towards growth.

              The main influence from the coffee and banana industries on San Jose stem from how they affect the city’s structure. Since the both the banana and the coffee industries account for much of the country’s economy, the tax revenue generated by these industries have allowed the city to grow its infrastructure. This has been true in past years and continues to be true today. In the past, the coffee growers specifically allowed for a larger percentage of their revenue to be taxed so that important landmarks could be built like the Teatro Nacional. Currently, the new heads of government have raised many of the taxes across the country to 15%. With the revenue produced by the coffee and banana industries accounting for a large portion of the country’s tax revenue, the government has been able to continue improving San Jose which can be shown by the current building of the Congress building.

              The influence of the coffee and banana industries on the city’s ability to improve the city has some ties to Pittsburgh, specifically with the building of the Teatro Nacional. Since the wealthy coffee plantation owners were essentially paying for the theater, a tie can be made to the landmarks funded by Carnegie in Pittsburgh, such as the Carnegie Museum and Library in Oakland, as he also paid for these just not through the tax revenue Carnegie Steel Company generated.