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Rome in Ruins (nytimes.com)
91 points by scott_s on Dec 25, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 88 comments



I've driven into Italy from Switzerland on a few occasions. It's like one of those MMOs where you know you're in a new zone immediately. Even though you're driving you can tell exactly where the border is, not just where the official building for the import/export inspectors are, but the exact place where the Swiss asphalt ends and the Italian begins.

Switzerland: Asphalt is perfect. No potholes, it might be a Formula One track you're on. There's no weeds sticking up. There's no plants growing over the signs or the barriers on the side. Signs themselves are pristine, like they were made today. No debris such as tyres or hubcaps on the roadway, though you do cross a piece of trash every now and again. You also come across the maintenance vehicles that keep all these things clean.

Italy: Not like that.

Most of Europe is like this. Germany is pretty good. France is a bit less decayed than Italy. Denmark is better but still weeds, trash, and potholes. UK is like Denmark, not perfect but you don't get that sense of failed state that you get crossing into Italy.

One social/political thing that always comes to mind is they could hire people to clean things up. They wouldn't be highly paid, but people on low income getting paid could be good for the economy. Italy and France also have reasonably high unemployment rates, so there must be some people who would be willing? And they'd be providing a public good: everyone wants to live in a clean country.


> but the exact place where the Swiss asphalt ends and the Italian begins.

Not sure why you were being downvoted because that was my exact experience as I drove into Italy from Switzerland using the Simplon pass two summers ago. I remember taking a driving pause on the side of a “statale” one hour after having passed the border and I was amazed about how much garbage there was (“this looks exactly like back home in Romania”, I said to myself) while the same sort of stop I had encountered earlier during the trip on the Swiss shore of Lake Constanz was as clean as a four-star hotel bathroom.

On the other hand Italy is the most beautiful place in the world for history and architecture buffs such as myself, I daydream about visiting different parts of it basically every other day (I’ve already visited Rome, Turin, the shores of Lago Maggiore and Trieste, but there are a limited number of summer holidays in one’s life, plus the money eventually runs out).


I've heard a lot from other Americans about thinking France was a dump when they visited, and I really thought they were exaggerating. When I visited, I was actually pretty surprised to find it just how they described it. I wasn't sure if it was just that it was different, but I guess it's nice knowing at least some Europeans seem to agree.

What really shocked me was how often I've heard terrible things about China from Euros/Americans, but going and seeing brand new, pristine streets, no litter in the rivers and streams, and not even cigarette butts on the sidewalks. I know dirty areas exist, because they do everywhere and China is the world's manufacturing capital, but they're doing great with their urban areas these days. But most Western cities make me depressed these days. You can see what they used to be, but they feel like they're wasting away.


China has cleaned up a lot in the last few years. Went to Shanghai in like 2009 and again in 2017 and it was like night and day. Was dirty, now clean. No idea if it was luck or cultural changes or government mandate or season or what.

As for Paris one of the earlier episodes of "This American Life" is basically about how Paris's reputation is from like 100-120 years ago.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/165/americans-in-paris

It's not the same place it was but it's still promoted as though it is. San Francisco seems similar to me. Much of what SF is famous for is from 100 years ago or more.

While we're on the topic of out dated things. I was amazed that Paris Disneyland has a Hollywood themed park of which a not small percent of which is dedicated to things that were famous in Hollywood 80+ years ago. Maybe people visiting actually know about that stuff but I'd be little surprised that references to movies from the 1930s are still relevant to most guests?


Where the hell did they go?! Ive lived in France for over a decade. Trust me, Saint Denis is nothing compared to South Bronx.

I’ve been to seriously bad places in the US. Like 3rd world shitting in outhouses bad. Nothing like that exists in France.


> I've heard a lot from other Americans about thinking France was a dump when they visited, and I really thought they were exaggerating. When I visited, I was actually pretty surprised to find it just how they described it. I wasn't sure if it was just that it was different, but I guess it's nice knowing at least some Europeans seem to agree.

I visited Paris last year and stayed in Montmartre. It was hardly a sterile place (like Singapore tries to be), but then again Paris has always been grungy — where do you think modern perfume came from?

What I didn't see in Paris were the tent cities like back in San Francisco. I didn't see feces all over the escalator and stairs at the metro stations like you see in San Francisco. I didn't see any hypodermic needles in the seat backs like you do on BART either.


I was in Paris over the summer; it wasn’t a “dump” by any means, though there was a layer of grime to everything that many cities have. Also the amount of smoking was shocking and to me, very unpleasant.

On the other hand, Normandy and it’s various towns and villages were so heartbreakingly beautiful, quaint, and filled with joy, I could barely believe that such a place could exist on Earth.


Sounds really strange coming from Americans. Maybe they all lived in some over-priced suburbs? Any major US city is definitely as grimy as Paris


France a dump ? holy cow, I need to visit the places you went. And I don't even live in a posh part .. yet the word dump would never occur to me.

As you said it yourself, there are shitty spots in every country, but so far I'd say France is well rounded.

It's true we're (I) biased toward China, probably because of the regular toxic smog news.


I went in Italy only once, but I find it's pretty similar to tropical islands in spirit. Cramped mountain roads, care free lifestyle. I remember in the 90s they were still using old buses on super tiny high altitude roads, driver would barely look while driving. It's possible that for them, it just doesn't matter, and things are ok this way. For people used to lots of infrastructure it's a shocker, but sometimes (except for collapsing bridges) I do think it's not a bad way of life.


I’m Italian and I live here in the northern parts of Italy that directly abut Switzerland. We’re not happy-go-lucky (or at the very least we aren’t anymore, haven’t been since the end of the nineties). We’re mostly exhausted and desperate about the apparently endless slide into destitution that our former political class failed to prevent (by failing to foresee the downsides of ‘globalisation’ for a cheap manufacturing economy such as ours was) and that our present political class apparently cannot reverse. It’s horrifying to live in a country that is literally falling apart around you.


Then I'm sorry to hear that. This partly explains the political context in italy, hard struggles and anger => further right.

Do you think there's a way to resolve this ?


It’s often described as a shift to the ‘right’ but it isn’t really. It’s a problem of terminology: there’s a definite element of euroscepticism (more on that later) which is misconstrued as ‘nationalism’ (and hence right-wing) but I’d prefer the term ‘sovreignist’. This has become the backdrop of the new political discourse, and it arises from the political class’ tendency to blame external forces “beyond their control” for the sad state of affairs. In this particular instance, as elsewhere, the supra-national EU has been called in to shoulder the blame. The new political landscape is one of new or reinvented political parties taking on the mantles of yesteryear’s left/right and decking it out in the latter-day sovreignist guise. The population, humbled and distraught, take solace in being told that all harm came from outside and buy into this narrative by voting for the new parties.

I’m a mathematician and macroeconomist by training and the fourth generation of family business-owners. It’s difficult to see a happy end to the current predicament. The Euro currency’s stipulations are now seen as strictures imposed upon European peoples by intransigent Germans. Native spending power is contracting and only exports are growing. Deficit spending gave us an unmanageable debt-load and this basically excludes deficit spending to reboot the economy. The much-maligned Euro is the only thing that keeps the interest rates on this debt marginally manageable. Devaluation of the currency, the go-to choice of the 1960s-to-1990s is no longer available.

It really is a pickle. If anything I’m amazed that basic services such as universal healthcare and education have been largely untouched. Some of the welfare state has been under fire but mostly the effects have been cosmetic. For now, at least.


You seem to be in a good position to judge or at least sense how much the EU is to blame in countries demise (be it Italy, Greece, Spain, or even France[1]).

[1] here too there's a very easy reflex to say Europe caused our problems, even though it's clear people forget other causes to issues.


If the EU is at fault then it’s all our collective faults, as Europeans, for having failed to make a success of this extraordinary period of peace and prosperity the European Union has fostered for us. The economic problems are less a fault of the EU and more (in my opinion at least) the result of having slowed the construction of a truly federal super-state. Had that been accomplished earlier, we wouldn’t be in this quagmire we find ourselves in.


I worry about the feasibility of such a large federal body. One that doesn't fail (even partially). It would require a lot of learning from citizen and I don't think they're ready. Usually what unite people of that scale is a clearer polarization point (war..).

This crysis might lead to something quite disruptive. Energy, political technology (information)..


And northern Italy is the "good bit": by and large, the further down south into the mezzogiorno you go, the worse it gets.

I was once in Palermo, the largest city in Sicily, which has buildings that were bombed in WW2 and have not been repaired. An American couple wandered past, looking for the famed Piazza Pretoria: they were actually on it, they just didn't realize the moldy pool with a boot floating in it was the (broken) fountain landmark they were looking for.


Some time ago, I came across the Wikipedia page of Naples [1]:

* >The University of Naples, the first university in Europe dedicated to training secular administrators,

* >Naples became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 as part of the Italian unification, ending the era of Bourbon rule. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been wealthy, and as many as 443.2 million ducats were taken from the old kingdom's banks as a contribution to the new Italian treasury.

* >by 1884, Naples was still the largest city in Italy with 496,499 inhabitants, or roughly 64,000 per square kilometre (more than twice the population density of Paris)

It's funny that part of the north believes that they were better off without the south[2]. It would be funny if it were actually the other way round.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naples

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lega_Nord


> It's funny that part of the north believes that they were better off without the south[2].

Or perhaps rather, that they would now be better off.

In 1861 Switzerland was a bunch of poor shepherds with goitre. But the world has changed.


Several claim the “national unification” was more a colonial effort than anything else.

But, Mazzini and Garibaldi were also interested in ridding the south of their Baroni and Viceré, who thrived in the misery and plight of the masses that toiled to support their luxuries


the issue with hiring as you qualified it is that many would find it insulting to the work that needs to be done. the wage they would want would be completely out of proportion to the skill level required yet they would rather not work than suffer offense.

We have created in the Western world a sense of entitlement such that there are jobs only those who immigrate will take. Not because because the work is hard but because the perception that it is for "those people".

In the US the best description I can give is, we have moved away from JFK famous speech of "Ask not what your country can do for you" to the near opposite. When politicians hammer at the idea of unfairness and inequality instead of one of service and hard work it can defeat a society as surely as any conflict of arms. We have far too few inspiring leaders and instead stuck with those who divide in order to obtain the power and positions they want for themselves.


Do you know of actual people or governments with unfilled vacancies for low paid work in high unemployment areas?

What you describe is too easy an image to create on one's head. It's easy to convince people this is happening, as fictional jobs where the employer doesn't really intent to hire anyone is are very cheap to create. But it is hard for people to risk their families living just because they think some job is beneath them.


I don't see how this rant explains the differences seen between Italy and Switzerland, both of which are in the Western world, last time I checked.


Switzerland has 76000 illegal immigrants. The quality (education, earning potential, skills) of legal immigrants to Switzerland is very high.

Italy has more than - half a million - illegal immigrants. [1] Italy has five million+ legal immigrants. [1]

The quality of illegal and legal immigrants to Italy is very low. I hope that better explains the differences between Italy and Switzerland.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Italy


> UK is like Denmark, not perfect but you don't get that sense of failed state that you get crossing into Italy.

You and I have a different experience on potholes and trash in London.

- Trash are everywhere in inner London, because the regulations against IRA bin bombings are still in effect. This is a hotbed for rats.

- Potholes are that dangerous I've seen couple of accidents just because the cyclist had to do unexpected move or drive through-then fell.

- Many of the roads are although two-way, but actually no two vehicles can fit in the lane (no surface marking to separate the two lanes). Quite dangerous. On top of this, many two-way roads are narrowed to provide shorter crossing for pedestrians. Check the front-left wheels of the cars and you will see what this mean.


Well that's what I would call

> not perfect

They have potholes and narrow lanes, but I've seen potholes you could sleep in some places outside the UK.


They probably do hire people to clean things up. Those people probably just don’t actually clean.


Something like that. It's not a lack of tax revenue or of potential employees, it's the system which is supposed to connect these two.


This is how I see New York City. Living there I was so used to it, then I went to San Diego for a wedding, couldn't believe my eyes when I saw people walking around outside barefoot. Because everything was clean, why not? Everyone else wore sandals, I was the only one wearing shoes.

I came back to NYC early Monday morning, rode the subway from JFK and had to walk through Times Square to get where I was going. Times Square on a Monday morning, cleaning up from the weekend, is so gross. Of course trash, also urine and vomit and food smashed into everything, broken glass, etc. Of course all that and more in the subway, and rats here and there. The wind tunnels that are the streets blowing the detritus in your eyes, basically aerosolized rat feces. Stepping over little rivers of dog, or even human, urine was routine anywhere. And this is Manhattan, one of the greatest concentrations of wealth anywhere.


New York, midtown specifically, doesn't even come close to how disgusting San Francisco is. Hell, San Francisco's mayor — London Breed, told off the last tourist who complained to her about how much litter there is in San Francisco.


It would not be politically tenable for her to do otherwise


> It would not be politically tenable for her to do otherwise

Sure it would. Both as a supervisor when this happened, and now that she's mayor. Telling tourists to fuck off only ends poorly for a town like SF that depends so heavily on tourist money.


First of all how dare you point out problems


Yeah I was in NYC for the first time this year and I was impressed by the filth and general dilapidation. The subways are exceptionally dirty, and the stations/trains along the A line seemed to be in advanced decay.

It’s nowhere as bad as Chicago though ;P


It’s not that they don’t pay people to clean up. I used to get on the A at the very first stop. The train would be parked until it was time to go, and there was a whole crew of cleaners. The cleaning went like this, the workers would start in each separate car, when the doors opened they’d walk in, then walk towards each other trailing their mops, sit down and start talking. That was the cleaning that the MTA was paying for.

This used to drive me nuts. Then one day a high level supervisor came on the train, and a group of the cleaners were in the car I was sitting in. He sat down with them and proceeded to explain how if they went to this certain building and filled out some paperwork they would start getting paid $40 per hour. He was going around, not inspecting work, but on behalf of their union, explaining how to work the system.

The MTA is the worst, and taught me the dangers of some unions. I never saw an MTA employee working. Once I saw 4 MTA employees standing around as two contractors changed light bulbs. NYC has a heavily utilized subway system, and it definitely isn’t free. But they can’t even pay the expenses for maintenance let alone improvements without tax payer support because of these leeches. This is why NYC and elsewhere are like this, people not doing what they are paid to do.


r/thatHappened why do people post stuff like this? completely unverifiable and highly exaggerated at best complete fabrication at worst


Because I lived in NYC and rode the subway multiple times every day all over the place and this is what I experienced. Lots of data points collected that were all consistent. Of course you don't have to believe me. I provided a couple short examples that demonstrated what I was talking about. I've seen plenty of other things but they are more difficult to explain. If you have routinely used the NYC subway and had a different experience please share, otherwise just take it as the impression from a fellow HNer.


cool man. i lived in nyc too and rode the A and C all the time never witnessed anything but white glove service.

>otherwise just take it as the impression from a fellow HNer. on the internet everyone is a dog


We've almost come full circle to back when people despised cities for being dirty and admired suburbs for being clean and affordable.


For a very long time (‘30s-‘80s) the subway had almost no funding go to maintenance. It got to the point where parts of elevated structure were falling onto the streets and people below.

It’s gotten much better since then, but the MTA barely gets funding for current maintenance, let alone funding to clear the backlog. Most recent fare increases have been to service debt issued to clear said backlog.


I have been in around 20 countries in Europe and Italy was the second-worst (after Georgia) in terms of rubbish.

The problem is not only with Rome. I have lived for three years in Milan and it is as dirty. Turin is only marginally better. In fact, on some days the road from Milan's Bergamo airport to the city was so dirty that it looked almost as if in a third-world country.

Interestingly, from my experience there was very little dog poo on the streets. Italians always seemed to painstakingly collect the poo of their pets and put it into rubbish bins. No such enthusiasm with other types of rubbish.


I'm currently visiting Rome and am shocked by the volume of garbage (and dog shit) on the street. It's everywhere and quite strange to see juxtaposed with all the fancy marble. I just don't get it. In comparison, my region in the USA is very clean. Additionally, I just came from Russia, which has a littering problem. But even even Russia is a clean paradise compared to the trash heap that Rome has become...


It's not just Rome, I saw this in other Italian cities as well. The tourist areas are well-manicured, naturally, but the outskirts of many Italian cities are crumbling. Infrastructure is generally outdated and poorly designed, if not actively falling apart. The Italy of postcards and travel videos is a far cry from the Italy most Italians live in.


> The Italy of postcards and travel videos is a far cry from the Italy most Italians live

I recommend the 2011 documentary Italy: Love It or Leave It. It's about two guys who drive through Italy in an old Fiat 500 to decide if they should stay or move away. In the process they talk about modern Italy.

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnnv3XS4Nj0


Spain is in the same situation, although maybe not so pronounced yet. It's a stark contrast to post-Soviet countries, which are relatively well maintained and seeing trash dumped is practically unheard of.


I’m from Madrid and, having recently been to Rome, would have to disagree.

While Spain is certainly not on Switzerland or Japan’s level of cleanliness, I think it is miles away from Italy. Just the taxi ride from Fiumicino to Rome made me feel like I was in Brazil again - crooked, dirty road signs, wild vegetation growing everywhere, fading markings/lines, and a general state of chaos on every road.


I disagree. I recently spent three months traveling Spain and found myself consistently impressed with the cleanliness of it. It’s not uncommon to see someone carry a spray bottle full of cleaning fluid to spray after their dog’s urinated. I’ve never seen that happen anywhere else.


Interesting, I am from Czech Republic, I was in Spain recently and I didn't feel like that at all. I have been mostly in Andalusia and the cities look great, Madrid looked fine as well.


Madrid is a fine city but I also was 'lucky' to visit it while there was a huge demonstration occupying the city centre. Didn't look so well during that time. I think right before that the garbage men had a strike leaving all the trash on the streets.

I guess in a way it doesn't take much to make a city look clean (or dirty) but it takes a lot of work for it to be constantly good looking.


Not to mention that Italy is fast on the way to becoming - if not already there - a mafia state. Reading Roberto Saviano's Gomorra opened my eyes as to how machine-like in its efficiency and hydra-like in its resiliency organized crime in Italy is with numerous sectors of the Italian state under the direct control of the mafia [1].

Combined with the economic outlook, this doesn't bode well for the future.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/mafia-toxic-waste-and-a-d...


Thinking of understanding the Italian situation from outside Italy and from reading Saviano is, in my opinion, complete BS. I like to form a personal opinion with my own mind reading real newspapers and getting through different prospectives and then, again, form my own. I wouldn’t take Saviano’s words as pure gold, I don’t like someone who gained and still gains from “writing” those kind of things.


I don't see how I can't understand the Italian situation if I'm not living in Italy. The link I posted in my previous comment was from a "real newspaper". There are hundreds of links like that, all from "real newspapers" documenting the damage that the Camorra/Ndrangheta/Sicilian Mafia has done and how they're even expanding and threatening European mainland. I stopped buying Italian olive oil because odds are it's been tampered with by the clans. Even the Italians I know in Northern Europe prefer buying Greek and Spanish oil!

You may not like Saviano but a lot of what he has written and predicted in his book has been validated. The fact that he unmasked Camorra at grave risks to his own life makes it hard for me to see him as "gaining" or exploitative. He lives his life in hotel rooms or police barracks under constant guard [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/14/-sp-roberto-sa...


Visiting Venice many years ago, I found myself watching the ground rather than viewing the architecture due to the amount of dog shit on the streets. Obviously picking up after your dog is not in any way.


Last time I was in Rome I had exactly the same impression. I even saw a discarded air conditioning unit at the feet of an ancient wall and it felt like I was in some dirty outskirts. I turned the corner and there was the Colossuem. Some Italian cities are very clean, others are even more dirty. It really depends and my guess is that after a while locals just stop seeing this. Clean and dirty is very subjective after all.


I’ve thought for a while now that there is a special depravity to things like littering that makes them worse than, for example, small-time theft.

At least the thief has a rational reason to steal and gains from his crime roughly what he has taken from another. The litterer by comparison gains so little but does so much harm.


I get the impression theft usually pays the thief a lot less than the value of the loot -- they have to fence it, etc. You could view that as a quibble about profit-sharing, but OTOH in the bigger picture theft is highly negative-sum because of the costs around prevention and the thief's extra work in overcoming it (and other costs). So theft actually is rather like littering in this way.


The saddest thing I've seen this year was a family waiting for the path train at 33 street and the (I assume parents drop some trash in the floor and yell at one of the kids who proceeded to pick up after the adults. Like not only are these adults actively littering, they are penalizing their children for trying to clean up after them. I wish I could say these people were tourists but sadly I have a feeling they're a product of our communities in the greater New York City area.


I'm always struck about how many people complain about trash, but seemingly so few actually do anything about it in their neighborhoods.

While preventing littering is a laudable goal, the solution is achievable by all of us. Just pick up a few pieces and ay and throw it away. If everyone who complained about littering did that, the problem would be solved.

Sure, there would still be litterers, but at least the neighborhood would be clean. I'd posit fewer people would litter if there wasn't already trash everywhere.


This helps to a point, but people only have so much time and can only do so much if the system is systemically broken as it is in Rome, where they are simply not able to process trash even when placed in dumpsters. Plus if the trash contains lots of things like broken glass or sharps, it might be dangerous for untrained citizens to dispose of trash on the street.

America hasn’t really made a dent in domestic poverty even though charitable donations are the highest in the world per capita. At some point you do need an organized government response to problems.


American charitable donations are only so high because church tithing counts.

When's the last time you saw a church organize a street cleaning party, though? (or opening its tax-free building to the homeless?)


In the USA churches provide a substantial portion of the shelter available to the homeless.[0] Church tithing is often charitable, and churches often open their doors to provide community services.

Churches may not regularly organise street cleaning parties, but I don't think that they consider litter to be one of society's great sins either.

[0]: https://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=s...


> or opening its tax-free building to the homeless?

Here are like a dozen examples off the top of my head.

https://www.journeystheroadhome.org/pads-shelter-program.htm...


People do litter, and they aren't many community driven initiatives to clean up, but I don't think litterers are the source of the garbage problem.

Many municipalities in Rome dispose of garbage through large bins placed on the street at the bottom of apartment buildings. Especially during the winter, these bins are not regularly emptied, causing piles of waste around them and litter being carried around by the wind.

The same happens with parks' garbage bins, with the added challenge that you probably can't pick up the park's garbage and bring it to the municipal bins... because they're already overflowing.


Pretty much all large cities are dirty. People like to stereotypically dunk on Paris but to be frank it's got nothing on London or New York. There's just something inherently filthy that comes with large concentrations of human beings. The only exception I've seen first hand is Tokyo. I guess if you're not used to large cities it must be shocking.

"There was a certain something about the air in [Ankh-Morpork]. You got the feeling that it was air that had seen life. You couldn't help noting with every breath that thousands of other people were very close to you and nearly all of them had armpits." -Terry Pratchett, Mort


HN's beloved Bay Area (esp SF) is by far the dirtiest city I've been to and I've been to a lot of cities.


The physical conditions of the city are a manifestation of the destitution of its people. I've lived in many cities around the world that were utterly poor - yet, the people kept the streets clean. Things were orderly and maintained.

I firmly believe its a matter of the principles of the society. In a progressive, wealthy nation such as exist in Europe, recycling is a thing. People don't want to live in trash - they use it for energy, or recycle it as much as possible. Those who sort trash, promote a cleaner eco-system .. those who eschew the waste anyway, as 'responsible consumers', also help a great deal. These are cultural phenomenon you don't find widely promoted in various civic contingencies around the western world; corruption persists in environments which support its ill-gained prosperity.

In Europe, at least, we can find as many good as bad examples of this. I think its clear, the same cannot be said of other of the western nations ..


Process. There’s so much process and bureaucracy in Italy that you can’t singlehandedly do anything. You need politicians - or rather, well connected busybodies - to call in their clientele, a couple private phone calls and “trovare la Quadra” which is an euphemism for finding a solution that appeases all interests.

I don’t know, maybe it’s a reaction to authoritarian fascism, or just something intrinsic to us (read several accounts on how it was all just the same during Fascism) but it’s just too difficult to manover such a large ship with small engines and little fuel.

It’s not just Rome, it’s everything around her that makes it so.


In Singapore they have a zero tolerance policy for littering.


The blog mentioned in the article (romafaschifo.com) is pretty readable via google translate. I noticed the vast majority of the articles are about political corruption and failure and not garbage. Compared to those issue, and speaking here as a Washington DC resident that is watching a similar kind of political decay, the trash is kind of charming.


Well, they have a mayor outside of the system that's draining the swamp for the last few years...you get what you vote for.


Although not all faults can be attributed to the current mayor, the current one is IMO the worst the city could have: elected because she was "honest" and green (as in inexperienced).

It turns out that real or perceived morality without any semblance of skill is not enough to handle a city, even more so a large city like Rome.


As an aside, these people aren't really "honest". They're just the kind of people who, in front of difficult problems and complicated situations, do the exact opposite of assuming good faith: in a textbook case of Dunning-Kruger effect, they think that things are easy to fix and therefore those who haven't fixed them before must have been dishonest.

In fact in their cluelesness and will to always point elsewhere for the source of the problems, they're the same as those who preceded them, just worse.


I had been in room recently on a "business" trip. While I haven't noticed the trash that much (1) what I noticed most was that literally every walk way was broken and had holes in it.

(1): I might have seen dirty streets to often/frequent to take much note of it.


This article is seriously lacking in photo evidence. Aside from the headline image, and one of dumpsters, none of the photos contain any trash or graffiti.


That's because its main point is... more than a bit overdrawn.

Yes, there's an obvious trash problem in certain areas (especially near Central Termini) and in certain parks. Which can be a bit eye-popping if the standard you're comparing to is on the order of, say, Switzerland.

But by and large it's just not that huge of a problem in most areas - and at the end of the day, it's still a fantastically beautiful city. Its main problems are: (1) lack of first-class transportation system (2) tourists (3) of course, Italian politics.


Rome in "ruins" is still way more beautiful than 90% of the larger metropolises out there.


This description of Rome is how I see San Francisco. Formerly such a beautiful city, now all I see is garbage.

Recently my grandparents, who had never been outside of Germany before, visited me in San Francisco. As we left SFO by car and drove into the city, they eagerly took in the new sights. Everything they saw was new to them. After a long period of silence, they asked me, with a certain level of disbelief in their voice, “Why is there so much garbage on the streets in America?” I was stumped. Later, recounting their experience, they told me, “Driving into San Francisco felt like entering a land fill.” I will never forget those words.


I went for a walk today, around my neighborhood in San Francisco. It was filthy. It was really rather sad. I've been here a long time but am now actively looking to leave. It breaks my heart seeing the beautiful city treated as an open air insane asylum and trash pit.


What they perhaps didn't see is that the US has a higher rate of personal car ownership. People don't like to walk over garbage, but they don't mind driving over it to an extent. The areas with trash are the ones where people of means drive and the walkers are mostly poor, like freeway underpasses.


You're right that freeway underpasses are particularly egregious but I found almost of SF to be pretty dirty compared to German (or Japanese!) standards. The incredible number of homeless people is also really shocking for visitors.


Yes, it's all about the Gini index - the amount of inequality in the society.


It’s not just rubbish. Half of sf looks like an active war zone. And lots of ppl don’t even own a car there.


SF is one of the more walkable cities though. And its streets flow with urine and garbage


California has always shocked me with the amount of trash I encounter on the highways. It's completely different from where I grew up in the midwest, not all of America is like that.

It's part of why I stopped riding motorcycles. There was far too often substantial hazardous objects like building materials or furniture littering the streets. I presume it was all falling from improperly loaded vehicles, perhaps people underestimating the effects of hills.

I've observed a lot more negligence and incompetence in general with Californians. There's a combination of extreme carelessness and lack of ownership for one's (in)actions, I'm not sure how to describe it, but it's very apparent after living here for over a decade. Everything is someone else's problem, maybe it's just the ubiquitous self-centeredness Californians are known for.

In any case, it doesn't make for a population that cooperates on keeping the place clean. The state would have to spend far more than other states to clean up after its residents enough to be kept comparably tidy. These people simply can't be bothered about anything other than themselves.


Ha! If you commute to the city by Caltrain and look out the window it looks like a screne from Children of Men.


It gets worse. I had hoped to show off Silicon Valley to them as a place that is, well, pretty awesome. Having spent their entire lives in Germany though, they didn’t come away very impressed. When we took the Caltrain from SF down to San Jose they laughed, saying how the rickety slow, old train reminded them of the Soviet-era trains they had in East Germany in the 70’s. I couldn’t disagree.

Later, we took BART. Let’s just say they were so put off by the stench and the filthy condition of the train car, they refused to even sit down, held a handkerchief in front of their face, and couldn’t wait to get out.

Needless to say, they were unimpressed by their visit to the Bay Area.


BART is finally deploying their new cleaner and modern trains, but the old cars are indeed well past their expiry date, farther past than any trains I've seen in Western Europe.

That may be because until recently, in much of the Bay Area, people of even moderate means often avoided transit at all costs. So the investment and maintenance went to roads, not transit.


Except the Bay Area has literally the worst-maintained roads of any metropolitan area in the country.




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