There’s a lot of wealth in Mexico City, but it seems a surprisingly small portion of it makes it to the level of public spaces. Even in fancy neighborhoods, the sidewalks are torn up, with big pieces of concrete sticking up and gaping holes in the ground lurking for inattentive passers-by. A significant fraction of the walk signs are missing at traffic lights, requiring you to make educated guesses about whether it’s safe to cross. By comparison, streets in major cities in Vietnam, a significantly poorer country than Mexico, are significantly better maintained. I did some googling in both English and Spanish but was unable to turn up a clear reason for the problem. If I had to guess, I imagine the issue might be due to some mix of institutional failure, corruption, and infrastructure repair backlogs due to the 2017 earthquake.
One possible deeper cause could be mindsets created by or driving inequality. Mexico City’s Gini coefficient is 0.53. The US’s is 0.48. Vietnam's is 0.36 Italy’s is 0.36. Denmark’s is 0.25. (Gini coefficient is a measure of financial inequality in a group of people. Higher is more unequal, with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing one entity owning everything.) There's likely a correlation between high Gini coefficient and less care for public infrastructure -- well-off people are in isolated private communities where the infrastructure is good, and public areas get neglected by people with wealth and power. I've noticed that while cities like SF and NY are full of boundless delights, I still get the feeling that these cities would crush me into the ground if I ran out of money and social capital, whereas I don't get that feeling from European cities. That's the street-level feel of the Gini coefficient.
The contrast of high-end shopping districts and decaying streets is familiar to people who live in San Francisco (Gini coefficient 0.50). It’s embarrassing that a city known for both tech revolutions and staggering wealth generation has uneven streets, potholes, trash all over the place, and no effective way of enabling the provision of basic housing for the ~1% of city residents who are living on the street because they can’t afford rent. In SF’s case I believe this failure stems from a mix of anti-development housing policy that drives prices up to unaffordability, restrictive building codes and under-resourced building inspection departments that prevent low-cost housing from being built quickly or profitably, and selfish actions by some homeowners that put enormous restrictions on others at a small cost to their own enjoyment.
In contrast, cities in Italy tend to be very well-cared for at the street level, with clean streets and well-maintained asphalt and cobblestones. Italy’s government is also not known for its efficiency, so what’s the difference between Italy vs SF or Mexico City? Part of it may be an increased sense of community and increased neighborhood involvement by residents. Walking around Florence in the morning a couple of months ago, we saw old ladies washing and scrubbing the sections of street in front of their houses. Downtowns in Italy are often designated as ZTLs (Zona Traffico Limitato), which means that only residents and cabs/transit can drive there, further giving residents a place that is uniquely theirs. Living downtown in an old Italian city also requires some sacrifices, including putting up with narrow streets and old buildings. The people who choose to live in these downtowns are likely doing so because they believe in a common vision for their neighborhood, and that likely gets them bought into taking care of the common spaces of that neighborhood. Florence is a living Renaissance museum, and the people who live there are all excited to support that vision. There could be other causes, like a local government focus on keeping tourist areas in good shape, but even less touristy cities like Torino still had that high-touch community feel.
What would it take for SF residents to have that sort of vision and shared sense of community? Is there a Jane Jacobs-like figure who could create a broadly compelling and achievable vision of what our city could be like and how to get there? I don’t know, but if this person exists, I’d love to find them.