First of all, the Naples that generations of tourists have avoided for years is still very much there. The city is a microcosm of all the social ills that any big city could possibly be heir to. Petty theft is rampant, and organized crime is tenaciously entrenched. Or, if they are women, they may wind up with underpaid and undeclared jobs as an au pair or, worse, join the ranks of the African prostitutes who line the ancient via Domiziana as it winds north out of the city. These unfortunate souls join the ranks of native underclass not merely unemployed, but perhaps unemployable, one of the few bodies of lumpenproletariat left in Europe, people with no skills to sell.
Public transportation is erratic, at best.
The most obvious ill is urban sprawl. There is scarcely a patch of greenery left on the fabled Posillipo hillside overlooking the bay and the small island of Nisida where Brutus plotted the assassination of Julius Caesar. Construction boondoggles, too, are of mythical proportions. In some cases, unfinished overpasses started a decade ago jut out of the landscape, arch over a highway, and then just stop in mid-air, as if vanishing into another dimension. A two-mile stretch of underground railway from the Mergellina section of town to the San Paolo soccer stadium was built for the World Cup games in Naples a few years ago.