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Rome in Ruins

nytimes.com

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Re: Rome in Ruins

#21

Post by [deleted] »

fyfy18 wrote: post #5
briga wrote: post #2

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 Infrastructure is generally outdated and poorly designed, if not actively falling apart.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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Rome in Ruins

#22

Post by mrunkel »

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#23

Post by danans »

sloanedavids wrote: post #18
sloanedavids wrote: post #15

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 the…

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’…

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#24

Post by danans »

sloanedavids wrote: post #15

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 the…

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#25

Post by fierarul »

runn1ng wrote: post #19
fyfy18 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#26

Post by dathinab »

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#27

Post by bobthepanda »

mrunkel wrote: post #22

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 neighb…

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#28

Post by lbeltrame »

TheLuddite wrote: post #14

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#29

Post by cpursley »

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...

Re: Rome in Ruins

#30

Post by adrianN »

danans wrote: post #24
sloanedavids wrote: post #15

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 the…

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.
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