When you think of New York City, what would be the first thing that comes to mind? The towering skyscrapers, the shining billboards, or the honking yellow taxis? I would say all of the above until I read the chapter 2 of Jane Jacobs’s “The Uses of Sidewalks: safety.” It hadn’t occurred to me that the streets of New York City, as crowded and congested as they may be, hold the city’s image and persona. As Jacobs said, “sidewalks, their bordering uses, and their users, are active participants in the drama of civilization versus barbarism in cities.” (Jacobs 30) Whenever I have to walk home after dark, I subconsciously choose to walk on the more populated street, even if it is the longer way home. The more populated sidewalks has stores, bars, people walking around and car on the streets. Even though I don’t think more people and more stores on the streets will necessarily make those streets safer, it feels reassuring when there are other people on the street and signs of civilization. Perhaps it is a psychological thing, but it feels safer when I’m not alone.

I remember reading the same excerpt of E.B. White’s Here is New York for my first Macaulay seminar class and how much his breakdown of New York resonated with me. White wrote of three New Yorks and I would consider myself to be part of the first New York, the native that is born here and accepts the hustle and bustle of the city to be natural. I often find myself at unease when I don’t hear the cars honking and the trains running outside my window. Those sounds have come to be a sweet lullaby for me, whereas the complete and utter silence of Long Island suburbs is what alarms me. While it would make sense for Long Island to feel like a foreign place, even a mere couple of blocks could feel just as foreign to me. As White said, “so complete is each neighborhood, and so strong the sense of neighborhood, that many a  New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village” (White 36)  As a native New Yorker who has lived in the same neighborhood my whole life, I’ve spent most of my life within the same few blocks with no need to go any further to run errands or buy groceries. However, although the city is made of different and diverse neighborhoods, the city is a sum of its parts and functions like a well-oiled machine with all its different parts working harmoniously together.