Adrees Latif/Reuters

Volunteers help push a boat with evacuees to high ground during a rain storm caused by Tropical Storm Harvey along Tidwell Road in east Houston, Texas, Aug. 28.

Susan Keays stands at the water’s edge and shades her eyes to better see an approaching boat. As she holds her cellphone, verifying an address, she quickly counts heads. One volunteer is missing. This morning, they were strangers. Now, they are a sort of family.

She is on Memorial Boulevard, where kayaks and bass boats bob in a river that shouldn’t be. At first, she came to the edge of the flood to save horses. She is staying to save people. 

As a volunteer, she’s amid the jumble of people trying to help the makeshift rescue crews stay safe themselves. 

By profession, she is a business consultant. But on Memorial Boulevard, her face streaked with sweat, she exhorts rescuers to wear life jackets, gauges the stream depth, and cooperates with local law enforcement as boats disperse.

“You could cause someone else harm, trying to save you,” she explains.

Volunteers helping volunteers save lives. If there has been a theme to the first few days after the 50 inches of rain from hurricane Harvey last weekend, that has been it. Call it the Dunkirk-on-the-bayou: the thousands of heroes of Houston. They are not deputized and trained rescuers. They are salesmen, entrepreneurs, teachers, and mechanics. 

And as America witnessed another Katrina-like disaster – the flooding of an estimated 30 percent of America’s fourth-most-populous city – civilian responders have shown an unfettered nimbleness, a rising spirit of can-do-ism, and a self-reliant spirit that helped a government overwhelmed by the storm’s human impact.

The question is whether the civilian army that showed up in Texas is a sign of what’s right or what’s broken. 

So far, there has been no Katrina-like wave of criticism for the federal response. Earlier in the week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott gave it an “A.” Volunteers, it seems, have simply helped the government deal with a disaster of tremendous scope. 

But the challenge of relying so heavily on volunteers comes into focus when their cellphone communications crackle with the question, “There’s looters, should we shoot ‘em?” – as happened this week. Or when volunteer rescuers themselves die, as happened when two were electrocuted by a downed wire. How much is it right to ask of Good Samaritans?

To some, the Harvey response bespeaks a lack of government commitment. But to others, it is an echo of an ethic that existed when the federal government loomed less large.

“Remember, there was no federal response to the Great Molasses Spill” that killed 21 people in Boston in 1919, says Northeastern University political scientist Daniel Aldrich, author of “The Power of the People.” “The civil defense era, starting in the 1940s, began to change that, and it pendulum-swung into the Cold War, where everyone began to assume that someone is going to take care of them – and it would be the central government, not friends and neighbors. Now, hurricane Harvey will push the discussion of the government’s role in disasters back into the spotlight.”

•  •  •

The effects of that shift have been on vivid display here in Houston.

“It makes you proud to be a human to watch that work,” says Bill Moore, the CEO of Zello, the app used to coordinate much of the Houston response. “You hear real, live stories [on the rescue channels]: ‘Hey, there’s a dog and three kids and they’re on the counter,’ and you can hear people whooping when help arrives.”

“The fact that everyone is out there in their bass boats helping people get out is a silver lining of this tragedy,” says Houston resident Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston as he triages emergency shelter for storm survivors.

The response to Harvey has already suggested a change in national readiness and disaster outlook from the all-government approach of civil defense era to a more flexible post-9/11 volunteerism.

It’s in part enabled by a Federal Emergency Management Administration that has abandoned strict top-down bureaucracy – a post-Katrina strategy to avoid overall failure when federal resources are overwhelmed.

But it’s also enabled by technologies that have turned smartphones into old-fashioned CB radios, helping unleash ingenuity.

In that way, to some, the response offers a way forward. 

Civilian involvement in rescue “is not a substitute for government doing its job, nor should it be, but it gets to this notion of a civil society, of people not just waiting around for government to do everything – that notion is the greatest savior of our country, going forward,” says former Tulane University President Scott Cowen, a Katrina evacuee and author of “The Inevitable City” about the resurgence of New Orleans. 

Politicians, parties, and federal agencies “come and go, but we live in these places, we’re here for a lifetime, so let’s fix it ourselves,” he says. “I love the stories of these faceless heroes: You don’t know their names, but they’re out there, in the thousands.”

•  •  •

Scott Sherman is one of them. A Houston resident, he decided to volunteer after seeing the flood footage on television. At the moment, his problem is that every boat is already stuffed with rescuers. He went out on one trip, but the water was too shallow and they had to abandon the rescue. 

But he hasn’t given up hope. He bounces from group to group with indefatigable enthusiasm.

“Do you need help?” he calls to approaching boaters. They shake their heads and he waits for his next chance. 

Moments later, it comes. He grins as he slings bags of wet clothes from a truck. 

For the rescuers out on the boats, smartphones have offered some measure of coordination, with different volunteer crews talking to one another.

“It has been so effective, where you have thousands of boats and trucks coordinated,” says Zello’s Mr. Moore. “It’s fascinating. You can listen to how it’s all resolved, and it’s all live, with real lives at stake and real risk. At that scale and with the help and coordination [of government], you see the better half of human nature emerge.”

In some cases, however, the communication has only highlighted the challenges that a volunteer rescue force faces. 

 “On one of the chats you heard, ‘There’s looters, should we shoot ’em?’ ” notes Moore. “Someone yelled back: ‘No, you can’t shoot ’em!’ Some of the [rescuers] are not trained, and you can hear that in their voices. Part of the risk is when you have helpful individuals in effect pretending” to be professionals.

•  •  •

Is this how it should be? Some say it points to a failed federal response. 

Former Joint Task Force Katrina Commander Russel Honoré called it “amateur hour” and said the government didn’t stage enough resources close to Houston. Where many see local resiliency, Mr. Honoré, often credited with taking control of a lawless New Orleans to begin its recovery, saw a failure by Washington to “come in big,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett Thursday night.

“The federal government took their hand off it and went off to fight terrorism – and each time we have a Sandy or Harvey, the solution is different,” he said. “It’s cooked up locally by the state.”

At the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston, there are signs of confusion. Some volunteers are turned away when they are desperately needed. Other volunteers are first-timers, with more-experienced volunteers jockeying for leadership. 

But that’s not bothering James Hahn II too much. As long as work is getting done and people are being helped, that’s all that counts, he says. 

He had been actively involved in the social-media aspect of the disaster, but Monday he realized he had to do more. The first day he came to the convention center, he was told there were enough volunteers and he was not needed. So he returned Tuesday. 

Now he’s sorting endless bags of donated clothing, separating it by gender and size. Being here has meant missing his son Fulton’s sixth birthday. He did his best to explain and promised they would celebrate later, when the waters have receded. But until then, he will show up at the convention center every day and lend his hands wherever they are needed.

“The biggest danger now is the sunshine,” he says, squinting as he surveys the hundreds of evacuees milling around the convention center, waiting for assistance.

“People start to feel like everything is normal again – and it’s not.”

Doug Struck

Jesus Soriano, with Zafiro (l.), and Yaretzy, left California to keep his family together and avoid deportation.

The moment is seared by heartache in Jesus Soriano. His daughter Zafiro had just run 15 times around the track to raise money for her school in Redlands, Calif., and was skipping excitedly toward center field to pick up her first-prize award. A man approached.

“You should get out of the country,” the man snarled at her, Mr. Soriano recalls. “Trump will fix this.”

The father leaped in defense of his bright-eyed girl with shimmering black hair that had never been cut since she was born – an American citizen – in California seven years earlier. More words followed; there was pushing. Zafiro began crying. They left without the prize.

In May, Mr. Soriano and his two children and his pregnant wife walked from the United States into Canada to request refugee asylum. 

“I feared that they would send me back to Mexico, and take away our kids,” says Soriano, who had worked illegally in the US since 2005. He had left Mexico after he was kidnapped for ransom from his small business. But there was little solace in the US. Coworkers at a print shop were swept up in a raid and deported on a day Soriano was off work. His boss told him not to come back. “In the US, I was treated as a criminal.”

A Canadian welcome 

In a small, welcoming office in Vancouver, the Reyes family listened to Soriano’s story and nodded. They knew it well. They, too, had arrived at this building, the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia, from the United States.

Here, they passed inlaid stones offering welcome in 15 languages. Inside they found a warren of social services agencies and nonprofit groups that would help them live in Canada while their cases worked through the system.

There were 18 dorm rooms where refugees can shelter for a while. A health clinic for their families. Trauma counseling, translators, youth programs, English classes, a day-care program. Even a program to introduce Royal Canadian Mounted Police as agents of help, not fear. The center is unique in the world for providing refugees the services they need without sending them scurrying from one government office to another, says Chris Friesen, director of settlement services. 

Since the election of President Trump, he says, the center has seen a sharp uptick in cases coming across the US border. An average of about 100 a month are coming from the US to Vancouver, he says; last year it was about 60 a month and in 2013 it was about 31 a month. They are from all over: Iraqis and Kurds and Turks and Iranians, often in the US on tourist or student visas, who walk across the undefended border into Canada.

And there are Latin Americans, many of whom have lived quiet lives in the United States for years before concluding the country really does not want huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

“These are families concerned about staying in the United States as they hear more talk about deportation and walls,” says Mr. Friesen.

It’s not just talk. Aaron Reyes was walking home from his job as a car salesman in Tacoma, Wash., when he was stopped by police and held as an illegal alien. He had been in the US since 2001, working, paying taxes, and raising a family, but with no legal papers.

He got out on bail of $5,000 before immigration officers arrived. But he was on their list. And he started noticing a change in tone of people he knew well.

“When Donald Trump first starting running for president and said Mexicans are rapists, people I knew for years were starting to make comments that Mexicans ought to go back to their country. I said, ‘Stop. You know I’m Mexican?’ They said, ‘Oh, we meant other Mexicans.’ But it still hurt.”

His wife, Alma, noticed it, too. “In the stores, they stopped talking to us. You’d go to the Safeway, and they were real polite to others, but they looked at us and said nothing. And then as soon as Trump won, it all started to come out. It’s like they could say anything now. There was a lot of bullying at school – not just us, but black kids and Muslim kids. I had thought we were past that.”

But what really worried the Reyeses was that their children, Mac, age 7, and Arvin, 18 months, were born in the United States. Their extended families all had left Mexico because of the violence and gangs, and scattered through the US. “I would never take my children back to a place that is so dangerous,” says Alma. Just as frightening to her, she says, was the possibility that she or her husband might be detained at work or while they were away from their children.

“We have heard when the parents don’t have documentation, you can get deported and the kids end up getting sent to foster care. Nobody has a right to take away our children, and I was not going to let that happen,” she says.

Sprinting across the border 

Aaron went first, walking through the Peace Arch Park on the northwest tip of Washington, where it is relatively easy to circumvent border officers. Alma and the two kids followed, but a US border patrol saw her and gave chase on foot. With Arvin in a snuggly on her chest and Mac sprinting beside her, Alma outran the officer to reach the Canadian side.

“When the officer came after me, I just thought, ‘I’ll have to go back to Mexico.’ I was so afraid of that, so afraid of being sent to Mexico, I just ran and ran.”

Aaron was waiting for her.

Doug Struck

VANCOUVER, B.C., AUG. 21: Aaron and Alma Reyes with their children, Mac and Arvin, came across the border after living in Tacoma, Wash., for 16 years, fearing deportation.

There is no guarantee either family ultimately will be allowed to stay in Canada. According to Friesen, the acceptance rate is 55 percent. But refusals can be appealed, and the process can take nearly two years. In the meantime, refugee applicants are allowed to work, get a basic health insurance card, and get assistance for housing and food.

“I am about to receive a work permit that I never got in the United States,” says Soriano, at the Vancouver center. “My family is happy because we no longer feel like a target.”

“It’s not necessarily easier” to make a successful claim as a refugee in Canada than the US, says Frank Cohn, executive director of VAST, the Vancouver Association for Survivors of Torture, a nongovermental organization at the center. “But if they make a claim in the US, they can be locked up in a detention center for a couple of years. Those detention centers are not dissimilar to prisons.”

The risks are understood 

Undocumented families in the US have always lived with the possibility of deportation, say Mr. Cohn, who has dual US-Canadian citizenship. But “post-election, they are feeling a cultural shift as people of color, with different accents, and different status. If there are an accumulation of incidents, then they make that decision to leave.”

Soriano and the Reyeses understand the risk. Giving up homes and jobs and now starting over while they live in squeezed shelters is not easy. But they say it is their best chance to have a stable life.

“I had spent so many years in the US that I felt American,” Aaron Reyes says. “It was hard to leave. But when we reached that Canadian officer at the border, he said ‘Welcome to Canada.’ I started crying,” he says.

“In all the years in America I had never heard anyone say ‘Welcome.’ ”  

Steve Helber/AP/File

A statue of Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stewart stands on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., on June 28, 2017.

When Mayor Levar Stoney drives by the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., he sees people who fought to keep him from where he is today: sitting confidently in the corner office of City Hall.

“It was the dream of some of these leaders to ensure that people like me, people who look like me, don’t have these positions of power,” says Mayor Stoney, an African American in his mid-30s with a ready smile. “You let your haters be your motivators.”

In many ways, Monument – as it referred to in Richmond – is ground zero for America’s monument debate. The five-mile boulevard in the heart of the former Confederate capital is the city’s historical crown jewel – featuring five monuments honoring Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. But it also speaks to the enduring racial disparities of today: the street’s multimillion dollar homes – many owned by white families – are surrounded by historically black, low-income neighborhoods.

Yet local African American leaders in Richmond, including Stoney, say their city will address Confederate statues differently, encouraging thoughtful conversation, civility, and community outreach over impulse decisions and violence. In late June, Stoney created the Monument Avenue Commission, a committee of historians, artists, and political leaders charged with facilitating community feedback and studying how the city can interpret Monument Avenue, a National Historic Landmark.

“We are going to respect the process, we are going to do this together, and we are going to come out with an outcome that is positive for our city. That's the goal,” says Stoney. “Looking at that mirror every day and seeing the reflection back, I have to ask myself: ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ And I think we are.”

Richmond’s process has shown that opinion is not black and white, or literally, black versus white. Public comments on the commission’s website have “run the gamut,” says Gregg Kimball, Director of Public Services and Outreach for the Library of Virginia and co-chair of the commission – from leaving Monument Avenue untouched to removing all the statues. But the majority of voices lie somewhere in the middle, he notes. 

Even within Richmond’s African American population, which makes up half the city, there are a myriad of views. Many black residents say attention to bronze statues takes resources away from real problems.

“One of the biggest questions for me: How much do symbols matter to us as a community? There are a lot of other things that are influenced by race in the city that have a [more] direct impact on someone growing up here than these statutes do,” says Dr. Kimball. “Taking down statues will not solve unequal housing or our schools – it has to be part of a larger conversation about why we are where we are. Hopefully we can use the history to inspire a larger conversation about structural issues that are keeping part of our community back.”

Shaban Athuman/Richmond Times-Dispatch/AP

Delegate Delores L. McQuinn, left, introduces Mayor Levar Stoney, center, as Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, right, listens during a unity rally Sunday, Aug. 13, 2017, in Richmond, Va. The college town of Charlottesville, Va., is reeling after violent clashes erupted between a large gathering of white nationalists and hundreds of counter protesters.

What are the priorities?

As rain falls outside, Latonia and DJuana sit under hair dryers at Supreme Hair Styling Boutique, less than two miles away from the 60-foot tall Robert E. Lee statue erected in 1890.  

When asked about Monument Avenue, DJuana closes her laptop and says she’s got something to say. There is a racial divide in the city, she explains, and it has nothing to do with Monument Avenue.

“Where are our priorities? Are your priorities teaching our children? The statues are not teaching them. They have to go to a school with mold in it,” says DJuana, as five other women in the salon nod in agreement. DJuana points at her young son fidgeting in his seat and tears start to stain her cheeks. “I have a 5-year-old that’s growing up in this world and he has to continue to see the hatred of others. When are we going to get past this? Where is the love for one another? Let’s move forward.”

Money is an issue. On one hand, the statues need taxpayer money for maintenance. On the other, removing them would cost an estimated $5 million.

Councilwoman Kimberly Gray, who represents the Monument Avenue area and serves on the mayor’s commission, says it is hard to imagine any funds going to the statues when city schools, such as George Mason Elementary, don’t have adequate heating and air conditioning.

“There are disparities between our public schools in the city and surrounding counties… We have tiles falling on children's heads,” says Councilwoman Gray. “We are so far behind, and that is the pressing issue for our city right now.”

Richmond City public schools, which are 71 percent black, 14 percent Hispanic, and 12 percent white, perform far below the state average, according to the Virginia Department of Education. In 2016, 58 percent of the student body was proficient in reading, and 54 percent was proficient in math. In neighboring Chesterfield County, where only one quarter of students are black, 83 percent of students are proficient in both reading and math.

Jerome Legions, a African-American resident of the nearby Carver neighborhood and president of the Carver Civic Association, can’t talk about the monuments as a racial issue without cutting himself off.

“I hate that we are having this conversation,” says Mr. Legions. “Let's put this energy on the bad test scores in the African American schools.”

For him, it is about more than the reallocation of funds. The energy around the monument debate, and the collective voice of the African American community, should be reassigned to education.

“Take that energy and raise hell with the school board representative. Knock on his door and pack those meetings,” says Legions. “Let's move that energy to the school board chambers.”

The right side of history 

When Stoney convened the commission in June, he charged the 10-member committee with finding a way to tell “the whole story” of Monument Avenue. The commission was going to discuss plaques that put the monuments in context, or potentially adding more monuments to reflect “a broader, more inclusive story of our city.” Removing the statues was not on the table.

But after the events in Charlottesville, Va., an hour away in early August, where a young counterprotester was killed, racial tensions rose across the country, including here. The day after Charlottesville, protesters gathered around Monument and chanted “Take down the monuments,” and one journalist was sent to the hospital with injuries after a fight broke out. The J.E.B. Stuart monument was vandalized with two cans of tar.

Stoney announced that he wanted the commission to consider removal as an option, and he delayed the next public hearing to October to let things settle down.

Councilwoman Gray, the first woman and the first minority to represent District 2, says the unrest on Monument didn’t reflect the views of her constituents.

Many white constituents have written to Gray asking her to consider removing the monuments – not because they are personally bothered by them, but because they have seen the way the monuments make their black neighbors and friends feel.

The mayor says he has heard similar things, and they don’t surprise him. Richmonders want to be on the right side of history, says Stoney, and that’s why approaching Monument with clear-headedness is so important.

“We’re the former capital of the Confederacy, that will always be part of our history,” says Stoney. “However I want the Richmond today to be seen by everyone in America…. That’s a Richmond that is inclusive, welcoming, open-minded, and that’s diverse.”

For many, that means talking about the city’s future, not its past.

“To me, the statues represent where we have been,” says Latonia, at Supreme Boutique. “You want to teach kids something? Take them to the statue: ‘This is who said you couldn’t…’ ” But famous black Richmonders like tennis legend Arthur Ashe and former Gov. Douglas Wilder tell a different story, she says. “ ‘Right here in the city of Richmond, where people said you couldn’t and you wouldn’t, you have come so far.’”

Whitney Eulich

Abraham León stands in front of his artwork on the grounds of the former Club Condesa in Mexico City on July 20, 2017. He's one of more than 50 artists participating in an unconventional art exhibit and 'intervention' here before the building is knocked down early next year.

The past is never far from the present in Mexico City, a capital built by the Spanish upon Aztec schools, temples, and ceremonial ball courts. History often resurfaces as this quintessential megacity constantly changes shape – expanding outward, upward, and even below ground, taking on traffic and a growing population. Earlier this summer, archaeologists uncovered a more than 500-year-old temple beneath a 1950s hotel in the city center. Last year, digging under a supermarket exposed ruins that date back 200 years further.

Yet, for all that is uncovered, the constant construction here can also mean an erasure of more recent history. That’s part of what drew curator and art historian Angelica Montes Cruz to commemorate a seemingly forgettable space here – a 1940s-era women-only swim club.

Club Condesa, coed since the 1960s and shuttered in 2015, is scheduled for demolition early next year. But in the meantime, more than 50 artists have come together to use the space – while it’s here. The crumbling high-dive is covered in graphic strokes of pink, blue, yellow, and green. A dilapidated recreation hall missing its roof and two walls is now filled with murals, mosaics, and a sculpture using found materials like a steamer trunk. A former steam room is covered in fake monarch butterflies, and a water tower, partially hidden by overgrown tree branches, has the imposing head of a gorilla painted on it.

By turning the run-down, sometimes musty-smelling space into a temporary art gallery, Ms. Montes and property developer Antonio Cordero hope to not only bring art beyond gallery and museum walls but also to spark conversations about the changing city and the role of art in memory and preservation.

“This city is transforming constantly, devouring the past and building up the future,” says Montes, standing on the roof of one of the club’s dilapidated structures, where members once sunbathed. “Art can play an important role generating discussions and action around the idea of change.”

Whitney Eulich

Artist Nando Lelo painted the high dive overlooking the dilapidated four-lane swimming pool at the former Club Condesa in Mexico City. It was originally an all-women's swim club, opened in 1940.

Gallery amid the ruins

When the Club Condesa first opened its doors 77 years ago, it was a unique space. At a moment when women in Mexico still could not vote, the capital’s first all-female club not only offered room for recreation and sport but also provided a place to talk freely about politics and current events.

“This was really revolutionary, really modern for the time,” Montes says. Nationally, women were granted the right to vote in 1953 and didn’t cast their first presidential ballots until 1958. Middle-class women, like those who frequented the club, were credited with pushing that fight forward.

But recently, as 24-hour gyms and athletic club chains started popping up across the city, this space couldn’t compete. It shuttered in 2015, and there are now plans to build an apartment complex on this land in the quickly gentrifying neighborhood of Roma Sur.

There are pieces of artwork that directly commemorate the pool’s historic heyday, like paintings of women in ‘40s and ‘50s swim caps and bathing suits painted wistfully across retired, rusty lockers. Other artists found their inspiration in the materials abandoned here, but less overtly connected to the building’s history. One fused together old gas tanks, creating a series of landscape-painted-spheres that hang from the ceiling of the gym’s entrance hall and swing as though ready to demolish whatever’s in their path.

It’s a mix of gallery and ruins, with telltale signs of a former gym mixed in with the periodic placard naming an artist or the title of a piece of work.

Montes made an effort to include well-known, contemporary artists alongside up-and-coming creators. The artists had to provide their own materials, but, once selected, were given free reign.

Abraham León is one of the newer artists. He gives tours by appointment every Thursday, the only day the El Ahuehuete Art in Transition space is open to the public. His work – etching over-sized peso bills with the face of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata on a wall behind the pool deck – is meant to represent the instability of the economy and touch on the privilege of the club’s original members.

“The structure and the space inspired me,” Mr. León says. “Some people criticize or question me for how much work I’m putting into something that is going to be torn down,” he says. “But I think the tearing down part is significant.” His work is called “the fall of the peso.” 

Many of the installations are painted directly on the structure and will be destroyed come demolition, a part of the artistic process Montes says she plans to videotape.

'The first wave of gentrification'

Once the building is torn down, Montes hopes to maintain a sense of history by including a commemorative plaque on the new construction. Preliminary building plans also include an arts corridor that artists could legally use for murals and graffiti.

Some question how well the plan has really involved the community. While climbing up the three-story high-dive, León’s attention is caught by a construction worker on the roof of the building next door.

“Can I paint something?” he asks León, mentioning his preferred brands of spray paint. León tells him to knock on the front door sometime to share his contact information.

Later, out front, one of the worker’s colleagues says he’d be surprised if he gets to participate. They’ve been working next door for weeks and had no idea what was going on.

“I don’t know how you’re supposed to have a conversation ... if you don’t know it’s happening,” he says, asking that his name not be used.

Montes acknowledges outreach could be better, but says the entire project is coming out of a place of passion – and organizers’ pockets.

“If we wait for the Secretary of Culture to open a space for art and dialogue, it will never happen,” Montes says.

She may have a point. But across town, two artists embarking on an unrelated art project about changing communities say it’s vital that artists recognize their role in transforming neighborhoods, like Roma Sur, and how that can displace long-time residents.

“Artists are often the first wave of gentrification, and we need to recognize our role in that,” says Sandra Valenzuela. She and Jorge Baca are the artists behind Santa Mari la Juaricua, a “saint” decked out in a charming straw hat and glasses, who is raising awareness about gentrification in Mexico City. Ms. Valenzuela found the small relic in an apartment she purchased in another part of the city that’s also quickly changing, and was inspired to give the damaged statuette new life in the form of a conscious-raising art project. 

Artists often end up going into neighborhoods before they are hip, Valenzuela says, because they need lots of space for little money. But whether it’s an organic process where others follow, or something more organized, like the art exhibit, “artists end up helping builders for free. And then they leave,” she says, on to the next affordable and soon-to-be-cool neighborhood.

Blueprint for today

Many of the buildings currently getting tumbled in Mexico City, like Club Condesa, are the slightly forgettable architecture of the mid-to-late-20th century. “That was a period when Mexico City’s population really exploded,” says Ben Gerlofs, visiting assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth, who studies gentrification in Mexico City.

However, some architectural gems like the grand, beaux-arts-style Profirian buildings from the early 1900s are being preserved. And, in a way, so is the story of that time: a dictator, violence, and repression. But what is possibly getting lost in the demolition of buildings from a period when Mexico’s population swelled from some 1 million to more than 8 million in a span of just a few decades is still at question. It was a moment that, in many ways, laid the groundwork for what Mexico City is today: a sprawling metropolis made up of people from all corners of the country and the world. 

“We can’t let modernity erase our memory,” Montes says. Whether it’s the Aztecs, a repressive government, or an exploding population, “It’s something we can’t forget.”

The bright contemporary paintings and dusty antiques at Inaki Gonzalez’s store in this chic seaside city draws upscale tourists seeking the perfect keepsake. But at the entrance, they face a decidedly low-brow message: “Tourist go home” is splashed on the closed shutter of a restaurant in pink paint.

For Mr. Gonzalez, it’s a municipal embarrassment, not to mention a risk to livelihoods in a place that is among the most visited in Spain.

“If I travel somewhere, I wouldn’t want people to treat me like this,” he says. “And if I did get treated like that somewhere, I wouldn’t go back.”

Anti-tourism sentiment has been bubbling in the most-visited destinations of Europe for years, thanks to cheap airlines, apartment rentals – often illegal – that slash vacation costs but can bump up rent prices, and an economic model that often favors quantity over quality.

But this summer it has boiled over, with locals staging protests on beaches, hurling eggs at visitors, and tagging buildings with graffiti that leaves no question as to how they feel: tourists are no longer welcome. That it would show up in San Sebastian on Spain’s northern Basque coast, where the well-heeled have traditionally summered, is a sign of how fragile the balance is before full-blown “tourist-phobia” takes root and how easily it can be co-opted by “us” v. “them” politics.

The United Nations says its International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development of 2017 is the perfect opportunity to advance toward a more responsible sector that can mollify passions that have flared in some places. “What residents of specific destinations are complaining about ... are not related to growth but with mismanagement of the tourism sector,” Taleb Rifai, secretary general of the UN World Tourism Organization, told The Christian Science Monitor in an email. “The enemy of the tourism sector is its inappropriate management and misbehavior.”

Tourism represents 10 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, creating 1 out of every 10 jobs. But the backlash against disruptive partying, mass crowds, and the displacement of locals has been mighty. From Barcelona to Venice – long battling crowds – to newer “hot” destinations like Croatia, local authorities have responded by increasing fines on illegal operators, limiting flows, and issuing tickets for disrespecting visitors.

Tourist-phobia

Tensions are far from assuaged. “Tourist-phobia” had been the biggest story of the summer in Spain, until the terrorist attack on August 17 that counted a disproportionate number of tourists as victims. Since then anti-tourism sentiment has been muted – but no one expects it won’t resurface.

Spain’s tourism industry creates 13 percent of all jobs. This year has already broken records: according to statistics released today, July set a new monthly high of 10.51 million visitors to Spain, topping the previous record of 10.02 million set last August. Spain already drew 36 million tourists in the first six months of the year, an 11.6 percent rise from the same period last year.

But it’s clear that the growth isn’t felt by everyone. Local groups have been seeking a model that looks beyond the numbers and puts local considerations at the heart of it.

Many blame the new tensions this summer on the politicization of “tourist-phobia” as well. In Catalonia, where a referendum on independence is planned for Oct. 1, a youth group affiliated with a pro-independence political party is believed to be behind some of the most radical acts. One tourist bus was tagged with the graffiti “Tourism Kills Neighborhoods” and its tires slashed.

Here in San Sebastian, many also blame the youth group associated with Basque independence – and not necessarily the growth of tourism as such. Borja Fedi, who is working behind the city’s tourism desk on a recent day, says tourism is down from last year, when San Sebastian was the European Capital of Culture, but anti-tourism sentiment is up.

In the “old town,” where the majority of the bars are clustered selling the famed pintxos – or Basque tapas piled with anchovies, shrimp smothered in mayonnaise, wedges of Spanish tortilla, and fried eggs and peppers – residents have long complained of noise, especially on the weekends. But this is the first year they’ve seen a march against tourism, which took place, uncomfortably, on the afternoon of Barcelona’s terrorist attack. “I think they are inspired by what is happening [with the pro-independent youths] in Barcelona,” he says.

Outside a market where locals are trying to purchase weekly produce, two massive tourist groups gather around a statue that pays homage to the Tamborrada, or drum music festival celebrated in this city. Maria Jesus Molinero, an elderly local walking her dog, says the tourists don’t bother her. “There have always been tourists here,” she says. “[Radical youths] no longer have ETA,” she says of the Basque terrorist organization that officially disarmed in April. “So they need another reason to go to the streets.”

Outside the art store Apetak, Mr. Gonzalez says that young people are getting “tricked” by politicians into thinking that it’s tourists that are making it impossible to buy their first homes, but the problems are much more complex and go much farther back. “I couldn’t buy a house when I was 20 years old either,” he says. “It’s very easy to blame the tourists for all the problems of today.”

Some camera-toting pedestrians outside his store snap photos of the pink graffiti. Others walk by unaware. Danila Moreira, visiting from Australia with her Spanish husband, is down the street studying a map. She says she hasn’t felt any anger directed at her as a tourist. But when she walks past “Tourist Go Home” she raises her eyebrows. “They do make their money from us,” she says. “I think that should be washed off.”

Some tourism officials in San Sebastian have publicly worried that future tourists could be scared away.

Many locals are eager for a balance to be struck – especially in Barcelona where tourists have suffered so much. Erika Remon Serrat, a makeup artist, says that if officials can find ways to disperse tourism across the city and regulate the rental market, then she calls herself pro-tourism. “It gives us life and it gives us happiness,” she says. “I love tourists.”

• Alexis Xydias contributed reporting from Barcelona.

AP Photo

Gamblers play slot machines at the Golden Nugget casino in Atlantic City, N.J.

A British regulatory sent a strong message to the gaming industry on Aug. 31 about its duty to care for its customers. The UK Gambling Commission imposed a record penalty of $10 million against the online firm 888 for failing to screen for problem gamblers. More than 7,000 customers who had chosen to exclude themselves from the site were still able to access the operator’s platform. One customer took $71,000 from his employer to play.

The commission’s tough action came just days after it announced that the number of British people over age 16 deemed to be problem gamblers had grown by a third in three years. It also found that the number of people who had violated their own voluntary self-exclusion from gambling sites had more than quadrupled between 2009 and 2016.

The commission’s stiff fine should help remind the global gambling industry that it must accept greater social responsibility to spot and deter adults with a risk of gambling addiction – or face potential lawsuits. The industry has done much in the past two decades to deal with the issue. But the financial incentives remain high to entice the most vulnerable to gamble because they provide a large portion of the industry’s revenues.

Regulators, too, may be under pressure from lawmakers to ensure high tax revenue from gaming. They cannot become lax in ensuring the industry keeps high safeguards of screening customers. Gamblers must also be offered counseling if they have problems.

The rapid pace of technological change in the industry has made gambling more accessible, thus demanding greater vigilance to screen and track gamblers. Gaming institutions have tried to set limits on the credit, deposits, and losses of customers prone to gambling addiction. But regulators should make sure that such efforts are not eroded over time.

Many governments hold liquor bars accountable for the driving accidents of drunken customers. Yet up to now, regulators and courts have generally not imposed a similar liability on casinos or online gambling sites for the social or financial damages caused by problem gamblers. But it is a simple matter of common compassion for the industry to do more. Its negligence can result in a pretty stiff fine, as Britain has now done.