When did we become the rats?

New York, despite its shortcomings, is a great city. Not necessarily the best place to live, but still undoubtedly a great city of the world. Yet its citizens are forced to share their main transportation thoroughfares--that is, the sidewalks--with mountains of garbage left out for the sanitation department to pick up. Nearly every other city in the same class as New York has in place a system that allows pedestrians unrestricted use of those routes that are meant to be dedicated walkways, not garbage-holding stations. Even notoriously ill-conceived Boston has its alleys which keep garbage out of sight and out of the way. Why are the citizens of New York, the very people who make the city the great place it is, left to wallow about in their own waste? Surely they deserve better.