Urban Sociology - Essay Example

Urban Sociology The three main qualities a street must have in order to handle strangers safely are having a definite demarcation of what is public space and what is private space. An example is the Lower East side of Manhattan Street where a woman through a window informed the author of no buses passing through barely a minute of his stand at the bus stop. The second quality is the presence of eyes belonging to the natural perpetrators of the street upon the street. The streets of North End Boston is an example where the streets are free of crime due to the presence of shopkeepers and residents watching the streets as they do their business and ready to help each other before it is too late.

The third quality is having sufficiently continuous users of the sidewalks to induce people in the buildings to look out and add number of effective watchers of the streets. This is exemplified by the upper Broadway Street in New York where there are benches for watches to sit on and watch the people and is often filled even at poor weather with the result being a safe street for both the locals and strangers. Having the real perpetrators of the streets watching the streets fit into the girl’s story from the watchers who do business and reside in the area including the author, his neighbors, and butcher shop owners.

There is a demarcation of private and public space in that the neighbors and business people in the area are aware of their role to watch the streets despite them not knowing the little girl but being ready to provide help fitting the first quality on demarcation of public and private space. These ideas are very relevant to the society currently is peace and tranquility are to be maintained in the streets for both strangers and locals. A place is made defensive so as not to attract undesirable people with the examples being the winos, bag women, and bag men, loud talkers in buses, older people, teenagers, street vendors, and street musicians.

An unintended consequence of designing a place defensively as exhibited by the Bryant Park is its use by drug dealers owing to the low flow of traffic and other undesirables as the public avoid the place (White, 160). According to White, the best way to handle the problem of undesirables is to make the place attractive to everyone else as exemplified by Seagram (White, 158)Work CitedWhite, William. The Undesirables. City: Rediscovering the Center. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Print.