Fallen fruit over asphalt is a problem (if not removed) that this guys are creating, this is true. You can easily broke a leg or an arm if you step over an apple or a rotten nashi. You can have a bike accident also. What the woman of the photo is doing will be a problem in four years. (Although racoons will be probably happy to do the cleaning work for us).

Other problem is that this trees lose aesthetic value and health. This can sound silly, but good trees are expensive, and a mishappen tree that only have good flowers in the 50% and with stems that break or touch the soil by the load of the fruit in a narrow street will be chopped.

But if we think a little about it, to have fruit trees in suitable areas is common sense and an ancient culture of sharing that is lost now. Those trees were invaluable life-savers at war times in Europe, for example. The place for fruit trees is in a park, where you just don't care if there is some fruit around the tree, not in a narrow street.

Meh, having been to tropical places where fruit grows everywhere, I don't think it's a big deal. Yes it attracted more wildlife (birds, lizards, snakes, the odd monkey and sloth), but it didn't seem to attract beggars. I saw less beggars there than in the wonderful first-world urban frozen wasteland I currently live in...

I for one welcome growing things of value in the city, not just lawns and decorative plants (which the animals - rabbits and deer here - eat anyway but people don't)

Rats in SF don't eat fruit. They eat the cat food people leave out for feral cats.

SF (at least the neighborhood I live in) has a lot of trees that produce fruit I don't recognize. Yes, it makes a terrible mess, but it's pretty neat to see. My home country had limited fruit with only 3 months of summer!

I think the trees are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbutus_unedo

In general it is not a good idea to grow vegetables or fruit in urban area's. The pollution from car exhaust gasses makes the crops unhealthy to eat.

Because all the fuss about insecticides and other chemical detergents in the bio industry in the last couple of decades, the food industry has done a lot to ensure that most of the chemicals are gone once the fruits are in the supermarket. Sure, it could still be better. But it is a lot better than a fruit tree that has been sucking up air pollution during its entire life.

Here is some more background: http://www.thewire.com/national/2011/06/ways-urban-gardening...