It's possible that Artemis is basing his opinions on somewhere like Prague, where in some parts of town you really can find a brothel, a school, a gambling bar, a police station and a drugs paraphenalia shop on the same street. The flaw in his point is the classic misassumption that continental Europe, with its millions of inhabitants and dozens of countries, is somehow all the same.
ABE: Now that I think about it, and of relevance to the topic, the specific bit of Prague I was thinking about with brothels and schools in spitting distance also has a church, but so does every part of the city built before the forties.
Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.