Sidewalk

This chapter lays out how Sixth Avenue has become a home, or “sustaining habitat,” to these sidewalk merchants. To provide context, Duneier starts with the renowned academic of urban life: Jane Jacobs. In Jacobs’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she asks what can bring together strangers on a sidewalk in such a way that they feel comfortable interacting with one another. She answers that if a city has enough uses, then there will be a variety of people, or “eyes,” on the street to keep to keep the public safe. Jacobs’s book has become “the bible” of urban sociology, despite mixed evidence supporting her ideas (115). Take Sixth Avenue, for example. Many of the eyes—including characters in this book—are strangers to the residents of Greenwich Village. Their differences from the residents—their lower-income status, their sidewalk jobs, their skin color—also makes it less likely that these eyes will be seen as figures who can keep the streets safe. Despite segregation, the Village has become a hub for members of minority groups from other neighborhoods. This is a marked change from earlier decades, when the area was mostly home to white, middle-class residents.