While in San Jose, I didn’t see many influences to the coffee or banana trade other than the coffee shop I went to using Café Britt coffee. Other than that, I saw a few things in common between Pittsburgh and San Jose. Although San Jose is not as city-like as Pittsburgh, they both have lots of green space and parks scattered through the city. Additionally, San Jose is known for their many statues scattered across the city, similar to Pittsburgh. Because both San Jose and Pittsburgh are cities, there is a larger homeless population than in other areas.

Although San Jose is limited by the lack of street addresses, I don’t think it affects their efficiency, especially with the mail system. Since many of the Ticos have lived in this area their entire lives, directions based off of landmarks work just as well as street signs. The only thing is that it becomes more difficult when people such as tourists come and have no familiarity with the area. While the lack of addresses does make locating landmarks a challenge, most Ticos are more than happy to help tourists find what they’re looking for.

Personally, I think the system works well enough for people to be able to find locations, but it might be better to add addresses to make traveling and locating spots more efficient. On the other hand, if San Jose were to add addresses to locations, there is no telling whether Ticos would willingly adopt those addresses. They have been successfully living solely by cardinal directions for so long, what would be the point of changing it other than just memorizing more words and letters. Since the system is works well enough and think about the push back from Ticos, I think it would be best to keep the directions as they are.