Google Maps has added “a fresh color scheme, including a different look for parks and city blocks,” writes SFGate. “But it’s the changes to the app’s all-important road maps that are rankling online commentators…”
Previously, highways and freeways were depicted in bright yellow, which stood out against a stark white grid. Now, the app shows every road in various shades of gray, with major thoroughfares like Interstate 80 and Highway 1 showing up darker and thicker than other roadways. Raynell Cooper, an employee at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, called the new look “cartographically disappointing” in a Monday post to X, formerly known as Twitter. He added, “major local roads and limited-access highways (freeways) are basically indistinguishable.”
TechRadar has a side-by-side comparison of the old and new color schemes, quoting one Reddit who says the new one is a bit harder to read quickly. “The toned down look is cute but not practical.”
And the Evening Standard shares more negative reactions, including one user who complained the new color scheme is “shockingly bad.”
“Hate it hate it hate it hate it. Yellow roads were so good, and everything was bright and cheery,” states another person on Reddit. “Now it’s depressing and the roads are hard to see when not fairly zoomed in, they just don’t pop like the yellow did.
One Reddit user offered another complaint. “I think the water is a fairly significant change, it’s a much closer shade to the green of the land which makes it a little harder to differentiate at a quick glance.”

And another criticism came from a post on X. “15 years ago, I helped design Google Maps…” wrote designer Elizabeth Laraki. “Last week, the team dramatically changed the map’s visual design. I don’t love it.”

It feels colder, less accurate and less human. But more importantly, they missed a key opportunity to simplify and scale… Google Maps should have cleaned up the crud overlaying the map. So much stuff has accumulated on top of the map. Currently there are ~11 different elements obscuring it.
Tech blogger John Gruber writes, “This is a very long way of saying that Google Maps’s app design should be like Apple Maps.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SFG / AP) – An emergency ordinance from Mayor London Breed aimed at addressing drug trafficking and overdosing in San Francisco’s tenderloin neighborhood has been heavily criticized ahead of its board of directors to vote on Thursday.

The public health declaration of a state of emergency enables the emergency management department to forego licensing, zoning and contracting rules in order to speed up hiring street cleaners and security services and building a new temporary center where people can be treated and counseled, Breed said.

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The order has nothing to do with a police operation, but critics are calling on the board of directors to reject the statement amid Breed’s broader plan to flood the area with officials and jail drug users if they refuse to accept treatment.

“Threatening people to arrest doesn’t work to bring addicts into treatment,” said San Francisco supervisor Dean Preston, who wants the mayor to spend money on expanding mental health services, alternatives to the police and hotel rooms for the homeless.

“We can do this, but only if we learn from past mistakes instead of repeating them,” he said on social media.

The tenderloin includes museums, the main public library and government offices, including the town hall. But it is also teeming with people who are homeless or in marginal homes, with a high concentration of drug dealers and drug users.

Breed said last week it was time to “be less tolerant of all the bull – that destroyed our city”. She said it wasn’t fair that residents couldn’t use their parks or leave their homes.

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“If someone openly uses drugs on the street, we give them the opportunity to take advantage of the services and treatments we offer. But if they refuse, we won’t allow them to continue consuming on the streets, ”she said on social media this week. “The families in the neighborhood deserve better.”

The number of overdose-related deaths in San Francisco has increased more than 200% since 2018, and over 700 people died from drug overdoses in the city last year, more than the number who died from COVID -19 died, according to the proclamation.

Nearly 600 people died of drug overdoses this year through November, with nearly half of the deaths occurring in the Tenderloin and neighboring South of Market District, the proclamation said. These areas make up 7% of the population of San Francisco.

Politically liberal cities in the US are grappling with crime following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, when their elected leaders pledged ways to reduce friction between police and vulnerable color communities, especially African-Americans like Floyd.

San Francisco Prosecutor Chesa Boudin joined the city’s public defender earlier this week in denouncing the mayor’s plan, saying that detaining people struggling with addiction, mental health problems and homelessness would not work .

They want her to use the money to build additional treatment beds, shelter, professional training, and other social services.

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