Cities 07

Think back to the beginning of the year. You walk back onto campus after a summer of sunny bliss and once again begin the pleasant but monotonous routine of academics. As you make your way to your first class you quickly spot the “new kids on campus”. They all make eye contact with you, smiling and nodding as they pass by, as to say “hey, I don’t know anyone…do you not know anyone too?” As the year goes on, everyone gets into their patterns of quickly getting to class/work etc. and the rate of acknowledging one another decreases considerably, even those of “new kids on campus”. You will easily find students with their heads down and their stride frantic as if they are always in a hurry, either with an ipod or cell phone attached to the ear. And with all the denial of greetings we rely on the consistency of the people we pass by, strangers they may be, as a form of comfort. “We nod; we each glance quickly up and down the street then look back to each other and smile” (118), or we skip the nod and smile and rely solely on the glance. The people we pass become part of our routines.

We keep peace, mental it may be, throughout the sidewalks (pathways) through the consistency of our daily habits. As Jane Jacobs mentions, “The first thing to understand is that the city peace-the sidewalk and street peace-of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves (116). We almost act as watch guards and are acutely aware of change. If someone does not pass by us for a few days we notice, just as we notice the new group of people that congregate on the west side of the Minnesota bridge. This idea, which I think Jacobs contrasts in some ways and agrees with in others, reminds me of Marco Polo’s narrative of Kin-sai. He notes that they have guardsmen that take notice of the out of ordinary behavior in the city and investigate it. “On opposite sides of each of these squares there are two large edifices, where officers appointed by the Great Khan are stationed to take immediate notice of any difference that may happen to arise between the foreign merchants, or amongst the inhabitants of the place” (Marco 51). Although in Kin-sai, there are particular officers delegated to watch over the unfamiliarity, the two cities still have mechanisms devoted to regulating these differences. And although in Kin-sai, there are particular officers they are still citizens and public inhabitants of the city.

The order of a city is important among a city and yet it is unique between each city. For example, in Kin-sai, “There are within the city ten principal square or market-places, besides innumerable shops along the streets…it is crossed by many low and convenient bridges” (Marco 51). In Constantinople, “it is enormous n magnitude and divided into two parts, between which there is a great river in which there is a flow and ebb of tide…its bazaars are spacious and paved with flagstones…”(Battuta 54). As Jacobs mentions “This order is all composed of movement and change…an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole” (117). Kin-sai, Constantinople, and Minneapolis all carry this order, this movement and change. As we walk through campus or downtown, we create this order through architecture and customs alike. Whether it is a bridge, market, or school, each person that utilizes the pathway that leads there has a different goal and yet the city continues to maintain an order.