in a stylewhich suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper

It will be in vain to follow;for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds.

The gamblers, of whom I descried not a few, were still more easily recognisable.

Ten minutes on this road, an ordeal for anyone, is especially dreadful for people, who remember the Bronx as it used to be: who-remember these neighborhoods as they once lived and thrived, until this road itself cut through their heart and made the Bronx, above all, a place to get out of. For children of theBronx Uke myself, thts road bears a load of speci .!!_o'!y: s we race throu h our childh,ood world, rushin to et o , teved to see ~nd in sight, we are not merely spectators but active partici-pants in the process of destruction that tears our hearts.

_<:.<:IIJ'~~·7lJec'?.IIle_nOLfll!'reiy. a . d.~-"i-...... ,~,~ .. "~~~, .. _,, __ .. ~.:. .. ~ _mulumedta nresentat· h.--~~ tence ts the whole world Th '7 :----h ....... -.... -... ~-;'-·---.. -~.r.~-~--,.----... -..... --......... }Q.f! ____ ~--~...9-~! allif depthtOffi.liCh ·~f~hat· i

he entire-city became a 'abricated by man, o live inside fantasy. )• · d -r · .~. ..~-~ence w e real and nat

Unpopular parks are troubling not only because of the waste and missed opportunities they imply, but also because of their frequent negative effects. They have the same problems as streets without eyes, and their dangers spill over into the areas surround-·ng so that streets along such parks become known as danger 1 Ia~es too and are avoided.

The first necessity in understanding how cities and their parks influence each other is to jettison confusion between real uses and mythical uses-for example, the science-fiction nonsense that parks are "the lungs of the city." It takes about three acres of woods to absorb as much carbon dioxide as four people exude in breathing, cooking and heating. The oceans of air circulating about us, not parks, keep cities from suffocating. •

In orthodox city planning, neighborhood open spaces are ven. erated in an amazingly uncritical fashion, much as savages vener-ate magical fetishes. •

There was a reason for the size of their fiefs, for their willingness to buy :-and, year after year, to pay taxes on-hundreds of acres that they kept m woods and never used.

They could esc~pe the Cit~, and, mo~e Im-portant, they could free their children for a t~me from Its clutc~es, they could take them boating and hiking and campmg, ~ould. ro~m With them through fields and forests, sprawl with them eatmg picntc lunches on blankets.

arks had always been a concern of reformers who were fond of referring to the need for "breathing spaces for the slums" or "lungs for the city," and the agitation for increased respiratory facilities in New York-generally for playgrounds in low-income areas-had been long and insistent.

a productive, yet relatively unconscious, speaking/writing of the city.

cross-dressing for women at certain times and places;

hus, cities become meaningful and habitable through the legends, memories, and dreams that accumulate in and haunt places

Surveys of routes miss what was: the~ of passing by. The ;j,eration of walking, wandering, or "window shopping," that is, the activity of passers-by, is transformed into points that draw a totalizing and reversible line on the map.

a sea in the middle of the sea

None of this should be changedby the fact that Hamlet lived here, and yet it is changed completely.

What begins as undifferentiatedspace becomes place as we get to know it better and endow itwith value.

Place is security, space is freedom

ooking at cities can give a· special pleasure, however commonplace the sight may be.

hey are clear enough about the ugliness of the world they live in, and they are quite vocal about the dirt, the smoke, the heat, and the congestion, the chaos and yet the monot-ony of it. But they are hardly aware of the potential value of harmonious surroundings, a world which they may have briefly glimpsed only as tourists or as escaped vacationers.

While it may be stable in general outlines for some time, it is ever changin~ in detail.

You will lose. Everyone loses.

Money only buys two things: lavish self-deceptions and comfortable suffering.

That your rent is a tumor in the guts of your bank account.

You see I was in a curious position in New York: it never occurre~ to me that I was living a real life there.

"New faces," he said finally, "don't tell me about new faces."

In retrospect it seems to me that those days before I knew the names of all the bridges were happier than the ones that came later,

There is the seducer in the shape of the young man who came before him, and who has already lost the last remains of shame. Th

. . The influence is often silent and unperceived, like the rolling in . of a wave in a quiet sea; but like that same wave it is mighty and resistless."12

What distinguished the nineteenth-century confidence man was.his position at the center of the anxieties that advice manuals expressed about American youth.