> But for this to be the cause of collapse, you need to explain how cities can have high levels of crime, corruption, and decaying buildings and then recover ba

> But for this to be the cause of collapse, you need to explain how cities can have high levels of crime, corruption, and decaying buildings and then recover back to lower levels of crime, corrupion, and decaying buildings. This sounds like a perspective of someone who's lived their entire life in the US. Meanwhile, here in Poland, you can have relatively large metro areas (Warsaw + suburbs is probably over 2 million people at this point) with barely any discernible crime - certainly not enough that it's anyone's radar as a social problem. When I was younger I was always puzzled why the american comic books focus so much on fighting crime (Batman, Punisher etc.) - now I understand that it IS actually a real problem in the US. I wonder why crime never took on in Poland, even though we have clearly way fewer economic opportunities and the state-provided social support is worse than in the US (with the exception of free health care). One argument that comes to my mind is the almost complete lack of drugs over here. In Poland, if someone is keen on destroying their life via a substance dependence, they always go for alcohol, which I guess is much cheaper than drugs, so it creates way less criminals. That can't be the whole explanation though.