the most important ingredients in a livable, vibrant city

As I see it, the most important ingredients in a livable, vibrant city are:

extensive areas where motor vehicles are either prohibited or restricted and where pedestrian traffic dominates

public streetmarkets/farmers markets

public spaces that are actually public and not privately or corporately owned

public plaza-type spaces that are landscaped and not too big, and with plenty of benches and places to sit down

mixed use development - residential units and commercial units on the same street

well-funded public transportation that serves the entire community and not just the rich

less emphasis on ritzy new "redevelopment" projects that price out former residents

affordable housing units located in the center of the city

distinct neighborhoods

avoid the core/periphery dichotomy and aim for vibrant, dense nodes of development outside the "core"

protections for freedom of speech on the streets

permit street musicians and performers to use the streets

permit spontaneous assemblages, vigils, protests, rallies, marches, etc

independent, locally-owned stores and restaurants and coffeeshops
limits on the number of chains and multinational corporations on every block

In other thoughts, I wonder how much difference there is in the average personal daily/weekly geographies of the population in different cities.


How many cities really have multiple distinct neighborhoods with their own unique sociological-cultural characteristics? What is the history of the (within-city) "neighborhood"?

What's on the shelves at the grocery can be a real barometer of social and economic geography.

New York traffic, art and power

I would have to wager that several hours of my day are spent on the internet. Whereas some people sit in front of the TV for hours a day I sit in front of my laptop. Often it is difficult separating out "work time" on the internet from "leisure time" as I often have multiple tabs open at the same time (thank you, Firefox!).
My problem is that I can rarely sit down and visit a single site. The internet for me is like a chain reaction. I visit one site and from it spring links to a dozen others. I read a news article, and if it interests me, I proceed to look up the key characters, things, and places mentioned in that article. Tangents are unavoidable, and often lead to tangents-of-tangents.

I stopped in New York last week on my way home from Cape Cod. It was my first time being in New York with a car. I imagined various horror stories of driving in the city. I parked my car at a garage in Harlem for the duration of my stay. But when I picked it up, I decided to take it for a spin through the city before heading back to Pennsylvania, just to see if the horror stories were true. What I found is that they are true in some places but not others. Parts of Manhattan are remarkably free of traffic. On the one hand, I was able to coast along 1st avenue for 42 straight blocks on a string of green lights. On the other hand, it took about 15 minutes to make 2 blocks' progress across Times Square on 42nd street.

I made the perhaps-suicidal decision to drive straight into the financial district at rush hour on Friday. The car traffic actually isn't so bad. There aren't really any cars. It was just me, and a sea of thousands of jay-walking stockbrokers. New York is a city where the pedestrians so outnumber everything else that they clearly call the shots. In a way, it reminded me of India - so many people on the streets, so much street life and public life. But pedestrians seem to have far more power here. If this were India, the cars wouldn't stop for them. Another thing reminded me of India: New York is full of bicycle rickshaws! I don't think I've noticed them before. They must only come out in great numbers during the summer peak tourist season. But there they were...armies of young men, many of them with Eastern European accents, charging $20/hour to pedal tourists around New York on bicycles with loveseats attached to them. The difference in India is that regular people use the rickshaws, and they are the cheapest form of transportation.

I went back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time in a number of years. Half the visitors there were Asian. I went up to the Tibet/Nepal room, which is tucked away in the attic of the Asian Arts wing, symbolizing the heights of the Himalaya, I suppose. There I saw many of the same types of art I'd seen earlier this summer. Only these ones were looted from their rightful homes by imperialists. In fact, so was much of the Met's collection of non-European art. As a kid I loved the Met. I still do, but now, having studied in grad school, I couldn't help but constantly think of the overriding power relations behind all that art. Art, culture....it's inextricably bound up in politics, power, money. Most of what cultures deem art is commissioned by people with power - emperors, philanthropists, dictators, titans of industry, politicians. Most art is meant to glorify someone, be it God(s) or men. Maybe we need a "People's Museum" featuring folk art, art made collectively, with skills passed down by generations, out of joy and not greed.