The buildings were a cosmetic fix and now serve as reminders of the giant egos of ideology and sit there like white elephants dozing in the sun. Before that, Naples at the turn of the century was literally gutted in the course of a decades-long splurge of urban renewal. None of this, however can be said to have worked at least in the sense of truly dealing with what ails Naples. 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.