fuck a suburb

"The stretch of Hudson Street where I live is each day the scene of an intricate sidewalk ballet...When I get home after work, the ballet is reaching its crescendo. This is the time of roller skates and stilts and tricycles, and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys; this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teen-agers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips show or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know around Hudson Street will go by."

--Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

I'm reading this seminal work on urban planning right now by this lady who basically saved the Village. It was written in the early 60s, so the excerpt above may seem a little dated...but reading this book, and then walking around New York...it's bugged how many truisms the work (still) contains. Makes you wonder how the fuck anybody ever thought projects were a good idea. Every page also drives home how enamored I am with city life and how I can't even contemplate the prospect of (ever?) piloting an SUV to the mini mall to pick up chips and snapple.