Poor neighborhoods that are ignored/allowed to grow with zero planning by the city government, eventually become a big enough group of problems that the useless dickheads in charge say "alright, lets fix this". The quickest thing to do is to paint soulless murals and bright colors on the small poor houses to give the impresion of doing something.

It's not intrinsically a bad thing nor necesarily counterproductive to attack the aesthetics first, but since the bigger solutions usually never come, it's infuriating. It's the kind of shit ~~CIA larvae rearing centres~~ failsons-lead NGOs do.

Something something "poverty romantization", etc

https://www.vice.com/es/article/el-problema-de-querer-combatir-la-pobreza-con-pintura-en-bogota/