Eyes on the Street

I ran across this story from Vanessa Guerrero on Instagram recently. She originally posted it to Twitter a few years ago; here’s the full text:

Living in LA, I’ve lived in many a neighborhood in which police helicopters circle all day and they don’t do anything except be loud an annoying. You know what improved the morale and safety of my neighborhood in less than two weeks?

A new taco stand. I’m 1000% serious.

In general street food vendors on a block means more pedestrian foot traffic round the clock, if they’re open late, that’s more eyes in a neighborhood. Additionally in an area with many dark empty storefronts, literally adds light and vitality to the area.

More of the neighborhood is meeting each other waiting in line for nearby tacos. I met people three houses down I didn’t know. It feels like we’re all only now getting to know each other, over a torta and some soda.

They also posted up at a bus stop and out open until 2am. Meaning people waiting for a bus stop are not longer waiting alone in the dark. There’s a noticiable air of camaraderie, safety and enthusiasm.

Street vendors did more for our neighborhood than the city ever did.

City planners had left the area in disrepair. The vendors literally CLEANED THE BLOCK. THEY PICKED UP TRASH THE CITY NEGLECTS.

I’m serious when I say in the area they posted up, it’s markedly cleaner. This is not the work of the local waste removal services. This is taqueros.

I love this. In her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote about the importance of “having eyes on the street” and foot traffic to building successful neighborhoods:

A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, out of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:

First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.

Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.

And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.

• books
• cities
• Jane Jacobs
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• Vanessa Guerrero