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Rome in Ruins

nytimes.com

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Re: Rome in Ruins

#61

Post by afinemonkey »

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…

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#62

Post by woah »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #32
phyller wrote: post #6

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 S…

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

Re: Rome in Ruins

#63

Post by yawaworhtttt »

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

Re: Rome in Ruins

#64

Post by maliker »

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#65

Post by Udik »

lbeltrame wrote: post #28
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.

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#66

Post by dilyevsky »

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…

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

Re: Rome in Ruins

#67

Post by dilyevsky »

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.

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#68

Post by nonphotosynthes »

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.

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.

Re: Rome in Ruins

#70

Post by drugme »

caymanjim wrote: post #59

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.

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