When the Timeline Becomes Our Sidewalk - by L. M. Sacasas

Reflections on Jane Jacobs, sidewalks, digital media, and our common civic life.

You can listen to an audio version of the essay by clicking Play above. Jane Jacobs opened her mid-twentieth century classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, with a discussion of the peculiar nature of cities. In the course of this discussion, she devoted all of three chapters to a single aspect of city life: the uses of sidewalks. I’ve always found the second of these three chapters especially interesting. In it, Jacobs examines the myriad incidental contacts generated among people who daily make use of a shared sidewalk—the nods, the smiles, the brief conversations, etc.…

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