A sunny Sunday noon time stroll to brunch through Central Square may be one's introduction this area of Cambridge. If one were to make that stroll on a recent Sunday, this is what you'd find.

Fancy solar powered trash compactors, trashed. Some are wrapped with "RESTRICTED AREA" crime scene-like tape, as if they were hazmat situations. If these were simply out of order, perhaps the City could invest in signs that say that, and in locks to make sure that they can't be forced open and used anyway. Or perhaps they could fix or replace them promptly.

Nothing says "Prime Retail" like a store that's been abandoned for years with pigeon droppings lining the sidewalk in front of it.

Central Square, for better or worse, functions as a very busy bus station. For the number 1 bus, one of the MBTA's busiest, we're treated to a bus shelter that's been defaced and bus schedules that date from 2009 and 2010. In a metropolitan area where real time bus information is available to anyone with a phone, we settle for pieces of paper that are years old and that may or may not be valid.

There there is the graffiti.

And the art that has been defaced by the graffiti. And if it wasn't the graffiti, the art is slowly rusting from the bottom.

Central Square has a lot of traffic and parking signs, by one count over a thousand. While a bent traffic sign is not a great sin, it, too, says, we don't care.

Central Square faces many challenges, some of which are difficult to address. A better mix of retail stores may well require more residents which requires more housing which requires complex land use decisions involving many stakeholders. But the look of neglect, something that's apparent in a walk through the Square,  drives the perception that Central Square is neither a quality destination nor a safe place to be. It all could be fixed tomorrow. The question to our city officials and the property and business owners of the Square should be: Why wasn't it fixed yesterday?