At no moment did he seethat I watched him.

The street was a narrow and long one, and his course lay withinit for nearly an hour, during which the passengers had gradually diminished to about that numberwhich is ordinarily seen at noon in Broadway near the Park—so vast a difference is there between aLondon populace and that of the most frequented American city.

"How wild a history," I said to myself, "is written within that bosom!"

With my brow to the glass, I was thus occupied in scrutinizing the mob,

As the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for not only did thegeneral character of the crowd materially alter (its gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawalof the more orderly portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief, as thelate hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den,) but the rays of the gas-lamps, feebleat first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw overevery thing a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid

I looked at the passengers inmasses, and thought of them in their aggregate relations. Soon, however, I descended to details, andregarded with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage, andexpression of countenance.

At this particular period of the evening I had never before been in a similar situation, andthe tumultuous sea of human heads filled me, therefore, with a delicious novelty of emotion.

With a cigar in mymouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon,now in poring over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the room, andnow in peering through the smoky panes into the street.

Then we sallied forth into the streets, armand arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a latehour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, thatinfinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.

We existed within ourselves alone.

The ability of a neighborhood park to stimulate passionate at-tachment or, conversely, only apathy, seems to have little or noth-ing to do with the incomes or occupations of a population in a ~stri~t. ~s is an inferenc.e which can be drawn from the widely differmg mcome, occupanonal and cultural groups who are si-multaneously deeply attached to a park like New York's Wash-ington Square. The relationship of differing income classes to given parks can also sometimes be observed in sequence over time, either positively or negatively.

Every fine summer night, television sets can be seen outdoors, used publicly, on the busy old sidewalks of East Harlem. Each machine, its extension cord run along the sidewalk from some store's electric outlet, is the informal headquarters spot of a dozen or so men who divide their attention among the machine, the children they are in charge of, their cans of beer, each others' comments and the greetings of passers-by. Strangers stop, as they wish, to join the viewing. Nobody is concerned about peril to the machines.

Conventionally, neighborhood parks or parklike open spaces are c~nsidered boons conferred on the deprived populations of cities. Let us turn this thought around, and consider city parks de-prived places that need the boon of life and appreciation conferred on them.

And the pencil kept sketching. The mind leaped on. It took as its compass not an island but a state.

Now red bricks, like those that had imprisoned the Lower East Side in tenements, were being cemented into walls in Brooklyn's remaining green fields,

Parks had always been a concern of reformers who were fond of referring to the need for "breathing spaces for the slums"

Traditionally, a woman walking the streets is a ‘street walker’ – ‘all body’ – part and symbol of the spectacle and decadence of urban culture. Women have historically been represented as an “interruption in the city, a symptom of disorder, and a problem”

the flâneur is traditionally a middle-class, masculine subject of leisure whose privileged position shields him from the curiosity of the crowd

They are returned from a relatively invisible, dis-embodied position of anonymous observer to their place as a body in the crowd, becoming spectacle for others, an everyday ‘common man’, one of the ‘masses’ once more.

causes the ;:n triOn o 1 s own possibility-space itself-to be forgotten; space ~ . thus becomes the blind spot in a scientific and political technology.

The rdinary prac · · ers f the city live "down below," below the thresholds at which isibiJ'ty egins.

New York has never learned the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts.

"Space" ismore abstract than "place."

Experience has a connotation of passivity; the word suggestswhat a person has undergone or suffered.

Berlin, too, gave Tillich afeeling of openness, infinity, unrestricted space

a legible city would be one whose districts or landmarks or pathways are easily identifiable and are easily grouped into an over-all pattern.

the apparent clarity or "legibility" of the cityscape

Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its surroundings, the sequen.ces of events leading up to it, the mem-ory. of past experiences.

New York will briefly study my face and mutter “Who the fuck are you?" 

Avoid the romantics

that New York is a giant meatgrinder extruding tons of chewed up dreams.

I still believed in possi-bilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.

I enter a revolving door at twenty and come out a good deal older, and on a different street.

That first night I opened my wi1dow on the bus into town and watched for the sky-line, but all I could see were the wastes of Queens and the big sig s that said MIDTOWN TUNNEL IBIS LANE

America was passing through a critical period when its character was not yet formed,

the malleability of the youthful character.

the youth's urban companion. He was the stranger who approached the young man just entering--the city, at the precise moment when all familial and communal re-straints were falling away. The urban stranger began his confidence game with an offer of friendship: