America and Public Disorder by Chris Arnade, author of Dignity a few years ago. He contrasts the public areas of American cities with the rest of the world.
That is not the case for the rest of the world, including where I am now, Seoul. My train from the airport was spotless, and so is the ten-mile river park I walk each day here, which given that large parts of it are beneath roadways is especially impressive. In the U.S. it would have impromptu homes of tents, cardboard, and tarps, smell of urine, and the exercise spots that dot its length probably couldn’t exist because of a fear of being vandalized.
You can learn more about the U.S. by traveling overseas and comparing, and five years of that has taught me we accept far too much public disorder1.
He walked all over America, and is now walking all over the world. The article is not remarkable for its originality, but for the opposite. We all see it, everyone has a pet solution or three, and the comments sections are always the same, with everyone either patiently pointing out to us what we already know, as if we are stupid middle-schoolers who just can't understand, or throwing up their hands in frustration at the intractability of it all.
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