One of the places where most of my walks took place was around my neighborhood. I chose to just walk around my neighborhood because it was accessible and since it was the wintertime, I didn’t want to really go anywhere especially if the day was super cold to just walk around and take a photo. I would much rather spend like 10 minutes walking around my neighborhood and the quickly scurry back to my warm cozy apartment rather than taking an hour discovering new places far from me. Because it was during the wintertime, it was usually almost cold, around 40 degrees Fahrenheit and sometimes snowed. Looking back in my blogs, it snowed a lot later than I thought it would, like in February and March. The times that I would do the walks in the beginning of the semester was around either noon or at 5:00 PM, pretty much when I got home from classes. I incorporated a lot of scenery/images to what I would mention in my essays, especially the first “hood” essay because I wrote about my neighborhood and what the word home meant to me. In my first essay, I wrote about all the things that I have seen change throughout my 18 years living in the same neighborhood. In my first few walks I walked around the same neighborhood I wrote about in my essay so it was easy to take a picture and talk about it because I’ve known this place pretty much my entire life.
Recently, or after “winter” ended and when spring started to arrive eventually, it felt like spring had started in late April/ early May which is super late in my opinion, I got to explore more and take walks that were not in my neighborhood because of the temperature change. It started to become warmer so I felt like I didn’t need to stay so close to my apartment and it allowed me to have better walks because I explored new areas and got a different view of the place, if I had already been there, because I would take the time to analyze the setting instead of just walking through the streets and maybe taking a quick glimpse. In terms of my writing, I guess I changed, although very little, and started to involve claims instead of simply writing how the walk was and what I saw. In some Weekly Walk assignments, I barely talk about my walk and explore something that was going through my head while walking or something I learned after the walk. For example, in a lot of my later Weekly Walks I write more about how I felt while walking and what the photo or scenery made me think of. I feel like after doing these Weekly Walks I take the time to investigate my surroundings more and not take those things for granted. I feel like I need to search new areas because I want to get to know New York. I hope that I utilize this website even though the semester is over and occasionally come back and maybe write about one of my walks.
From reading your introduction paragraph, I understand that you will be discussing about the importance of population or density and have it can affect safety and walkability in general. I like how you relate your topics/thesis with our discussions in class. Additionally, you analyze and break down the quote from the book. You also provide evidence for Jacobs’ claim with another source. In the study that you bring up, you discuss how possible witnesses to a possible crime can deter a crime from happening which helps your argument. Then you bring up your source from the weekly walks to bring up the importance of “eyes” on the streets. In your counter claim, you mention that the time of day plays a minuscule factor to crime being committed, but I feel like the time of day plays a big role in people walking around because there are more diurnal people than nocturnal. I noticed there are a lot of minor grammatical errors so I suggest reading your essay over. I also noticed you repeat yourself a couple of times and I think you can remove or phrase it differently.
Spencer:
From reading your introduction, and also reading from the previous peer review, I understood it as your essay will revolve around the harms of industrialization which causes global warming harming the planet. The last bit of the introduction is engaging and alluring. You included sources and evidence in your first and second paragraph which showed me that you really understand what you’re writing about which gives you credibility. You introduce quotes and broke them down and analyzed it which helped grow and strengthen your argument. It shows the importance and how immediate action is necessary. You introduce your fourth source which includes another problem which is air pollution and showing another harm to the planet. There a small grammatical mistakes and easily corrected if you read your essay over again. While reading your essay, I saw a couple of times how “it is detrimental” and “humanity’s ignorance” (or similar terms) is repeated so I think you can remove some of those sentences.
Since the dawn of time, walking has been an essential and integral part of everyday living for humans. Without the ability to walk, you lacked the skills to survive independently. Nowadays, the ability to walk isn’t used as frequently with the evolution of technology and the introduction of mass transit and vehicles. The start of focusing on structuring more modern societies and technological advances have separated our distance between walking and surviving. We, as humans have evolved from living in villages and hunting for food to living in cities and working in offices. It is evident that the evolution of our societal structure and the implementations of environmental design have affected our walkability. We now rely less on walking because there are faster and more accessible means of transportation. Urban design has introduced many new advances to cities and metropolitan areas, like New York City. As a result, the walkability of that certain place is positively affected.
The creation of mass transportation such as trains or buses have played a huge role in affecting walkability in the last couple of centuries. The idea that going from one location to another would take a couple of hours and could then be shortened by more than half the time is astonishing. Obviously, this will affect how people live their lives. For example, in New York City, mass transportation has become a daily part of living. People depend on public transportation to get to places. Without public transit, many people would not be able to go to their job, school, or a friend’s home. Public transit has made it so much easier for people to get to places. It connects the boroughs together. If I wanted to walk to school from my home, it would take me approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes; if I take the subway it will take me roughly 40 minutes, if there are no delays. This does come at a price however, and not talking about the MTA fee but you miss out on looking at scenery. Meaning you’re stuck inside a subway train with nothing to look at besides the advertisements on the walls or the lights when you look out the window that you pass by every couple of seconds; it is very repetitive and you don’t get to see sights compared to walking. It’s a very dull and repetitive experience after you’ve taken the same subway route for over four years. This is different however for above ground trains and buses, but a majority of people who want to travel from borough to borough usually take the underground subway because it is more convenient to transfer between trains and the frequency of subway trains is higher than buses.
Mass transportation also affects the way people interact. As a person who resides in New York City, mass transportation, like the subway is viewed to get to a place quickly, from point A to point B. There is no need to talk to strangers and interact with them. You don’t need to make any eye contact and have an awkward moment where both of you are looking at each other. Usually, to prevent this, people listen to music or sleep on their trip to their destination. Something I see very often in my subway rides are people who go from subway to subway asking for money or donations to help them or their family. Most people don’t even bat an eye and completely ignore the person. However this doesn’t only happen on the subway. I always found this odd because it made me feel so distant from everyone in the train. There is no connection between people who are literally close to each other, in a physical sense. I sometimes see the same people daily on my way to school in the same station or subway train but never feel the need to have any interactions with them.
This is a video taken by someone who recorded their subway ride on video. You can see almost everyone is on their phones, listening to music, or just standing there. If you listen to the background noise, there is little to no conversation for most of the video and you can hear the train moving through the tracks. There isn’t really anything to look at if you’re not on your phone and everything seems so dull. I have taken the R trains almost everyday to go to school and this is a normal experience, except there are more people, usually sleeping, but the everyone relatively keeps to themselves and the atmosphere of the subway ride is very eerie almost. However, I feel the benefits of taking the subway outweigh the downsides, such as less interaction between people, because you can get to your destination a lot faster than it would take walking. The subway system in New York City plays a detrimental role in walkability because it makes going to places very convienient and the subway does feel like a safe place, especially since there are people always with you.
Another means of transportation besides walking or taking public transportation is by car Within New York City, there is a very large culture that involves taxis. If you google search “New York City” it is almost guaranteed that you will see pictures of a sea of yellow taxi cabs. For those in the city who don’t want to take the public transportations such as the bus or the subway, they take the taxi. Within these couple of years, services like Uber and Lyft have also become very popular in cities because they tend to be cheaper than the standard taxis. People who don’t have subway/bus stations near their area of residence, or own a vehicle to drive, can order an Uber or Lyft through their phone and get to their destination. This concept also affects walkability because taxis and Uber can help people such as tourists or friends navigate around the city without worrying about learning the subway/bus routes.
Having multiple means of transportation isn’t the only factor that affects walkability. According to J. Michael Oakes, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota and conducted a study on the effects of neighborhood density and street connectivity on walking behavior, key environment factors that affect walking are: density, street pattern or connectivity, mixed land uses or the presence of destinations, and pedestrian infrastructure and design related to issues of comfort, safety, and interest. Out of those factors, Oakes believes the two most important contributions to walkability are density and street pattern. Density is important because higher densities affect the way people walk and how safe they feel – more people to walk, to see others walking, to feel safer. Additionally, the higher the density, the more traffic congestion, meaning it is sometimes more convenient to walk to certain places. Street pattern is how simple or difficult it is to navigate through a location, and is significant to walkability also because it affects the directness of travel, making travel more or less efficient.
Cities that have developed over the years can also affect the walkability. For instance, Manhattan is a grid, where the streets ascend/descend vertically and avenues increase/decrease horizontally. This has to do with street patterns; the more thought that goes into urban planning like street patterns can directly have a positive or negative affect on residents. In this case, it helps residents and visitors travel from place to place because of the street’s familiarity to a grid. It is very straightforward to walk through and not get lost in the city, because you can simply look at street signs and know the general direction you need to walk towards. Additionally, the streets of Manhattan are almost always populated, living up to the name of the city that never sleeps, which adds to the cycle of more people walking. These two examples provide evidence to Oakes’ claim on the vital factors of walkability. In “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs, she writes “To keep the city safe is a fundamental task of a city’s streets and its sidewalks.” Jacobs is trying to convey: to keep the city feeling safe for its residents, the streets have a higher density. The pedestrians don’t need to be doing anything actively to protect others, they just need to be present and work like “eyes” to be mindful to keep the streets safe. This is relatable with Manhattan and Oakes’ claim because, as mentioned above, Manhattan’s streets are usually never left alone, especially in Lower Manhattan. People who have work, live there, or just simply walk around will always be present in all times of the day. And according the Jane Jacobs, that will prompt the city to be safer. From my weekly walks, whenever I walked around in Manhattan, the most obvious observations were the buildings and the amount of people walking in the streets. A large number of those people were on their way to work and were just mere afterimages. You see them for a couple of seconds and you forget their faces after a couple of minutes. During my time in Manhattan, for high school and college, I didn’t not ever feel safe or protected; there were always people around me and I was never alone. Additionally, like mentioned earlier in the paragraphs above, the subway also almost always have people in them because they’re going somewhere. Even if there is no communication or interaction between the riders, there is still a sense of safety because you recognize and feel their presence. It’s a familiar feeling for me because I’ve been taking the subway for a long time. In Lower Manhattan, like Times Square, there are police almost on every block, but according the Jacobs that isn’t the main contribution to the safer streets, it’s the pedestrians and tourists that prevent others from commiting crime.
Population density, mass transportation, and street patterns benefit the walkability score of cities. Some may argue that those factors are negatives and the opposite of a safer environment. The same group may argue that because there is a greater population, it can cause more criminal behavior. For example, the recent events and gun shootings that have taken place in crowded places caused more harm because there was a denser population. Contrary to those beliefs, the density in population isn’t the usual cause of a mass shooting or other crimes associated with terrorism. The crime would still be committed even if there were fewer people because the action is usually derived from a hate towards an individual or group. It should actually have the opposite affect; according to Jacobs a denser population helps with crime prevention because there are more witnesses and that deters the possible criminal.
As a society, we have stopped relying on our primal instincts and have grown into more intellectual beings. We have gone from hunters and gatherers to living in cities and taking the subway to work or school. Walability is defined as environmental features or means of making walkable environments, including areas being traversable, compact, physically enticing and safe. Evidently, transportation, such as the subway, bus, taxis, and services like Uber or Lyft, does play a significant role in walkability because instead of walking to your destination you can take these alternatives to shorten your time to get to a place. Population density and street pattern according to J. Michael Oakes and Jane Jacobs also affect walkability because the more dense a street or city, the more safer the environment becomes and street patterns can make it easier for pedestrians to walk in, or drive through, streets. Advances in society has added positive contributions and has simplified the way of living compared to how it was centuries ago.
Works Cited
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, Random House, 1961.
Oakes, Michael J. “The effects of neighborhood density and street connectivity on walking
behavior: the Twin Cities walking study.” Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations,
This is a picture of 23rd street at around 4:30 PM. I took this picture when I was walking from school to the station and since it rained today, it was foggy and cloudy in the sky. I don’t think it has rained this much since a long time since the temperature outside was too cold and the rain would turn to snow. I took this picture because in my opinion it looked eerie and mysterious. It didn’t look real. It’s almost as if the building that touch the fog keep going up infinitely, there is no roof. While there are a bunch of people on the ground level. It’s almost like this picture is from a movie, all we’re missing are more taller buildings and flying cars.
This picture was taken today (April 18th, 2018). I was in 53rd street 5th avenue and was going somewhere to eat and I just got out of the station that the M and E train go to. I quickly took this picture because I was looking at the sky and feeling the slight breeze and thought to myself, ” spring is finally here.” I also took this picture because, like mentiones in my essay, Manhattan is a grid and this picture is evidence of that. The streets are made up of rectangles with smaller rectangles. Besides that, while I was walking there was a building, I think the MOMA, Mueseum of Modern Art, under construction and looking at all these huge buildings I’m amazed how people have been able to create these architectures. Someone had to think to start building up instead of expanding and wasting land space for another building. I wonder how people from the 40th floor see pedestrians and if it makes them feel a certain way, like we see ants in a uniform chaotic formation.
I took this picture while renewing my passport. Since the place was near Central Park, and I haven’t been there in a long time, and it was nice outside I decided to head over there and walk around for this week’s weekly walks. This statue caught my attention right away. The gold was really eye-catching and took me a couple of seconds to snap out of this dazed state. I went up to the statue to read the information and importance of this structure. It was called William Tecumseh Sherman, who was a general in the Union Army and was recognized by his military strategies. I thought to myself, “We have all this knowledge on these historical people and have built monuments, I wonder if in year 3000 there will be statues and history lessons of us.” I never really thought about this until that day and it really was a random thought but I don’t know the answer and I’m sure I’ll never know. The people from the past have built our country and world to become what is it today. I’m curious how the future will be in a thousand years and how different it is from now.
Since the dawn of time, walking has been an essential and integral part of everyday living for humans. Without the ability to walk, you lacked the skills to survive independently. Nowadays, the ability to walk isn’t used as frequently with the evolution of technology and the introduction of mass transit and vehicles. The start of focusing on structuring more modern societies and technological advances have separated our distance between walking and surviving. We, as humans have evolved from living in villages and hunting for food to living in cities and working in offices. It is evident that the evolution of our societal structure and the implementations of environmental design have affected our walkability. We now rely less on walking because there are faster and more accessible means of transportation. The environment you surround yourself in definitely affects walkability and how you interact.
The creation of mass transportation such as trains or buses have played a huge role in affecting walkability in the last couple of centuries. The idea that going from one location to another would take couple of hours to get to can be shortened by more than half the time is astonishing. Obviously, this will affect how people live their lives. For example, in New York City, mass transportation has become a daily part of living. People depend on the public transportation to get to places. Without public transit, many people would not be able to go to their job, school, or a friend’s home. Public transit has made it so much easier for people to get to places. It connects the boroughs together. If I wanted to walk to school from my home, it would take me approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes; if I take the subway it will take me roughly 40 minutes, if there are no delays. This does come at a price however, and not talking about the MTA fee but you miss out on looking at things. Meaning you’re stuck inside a subway train with nothing to look at besides the advertisements on the walls or the lights when you look out the window that you pass by every couple of seconds; it is very repetitive and you don’t get to see sights compared to walking. This is different however for above ground trains and buses, but a majority of people who want to travel from borough to borough usually take the underground subway, including me. It’s a very dull and repetitive experience after you’ve taken the same subway route for four years.
Mass transportation also affects the way people interact. As a person who resides in New York City, mass transportation, like the subway is viewed to get to a place quickly, from point A to point B. There is no need to talk to strangers and interact with them. You don’t need to make any eye contact and have an awkward moment where both of you are looking at each other. Usually to prevent this, people listen to music or sleep on their trip to their destination. Something I see very often in my subway rides are people who go to subway to subway asking for money or donations to help them or their family. Most people don’t even bat an eye and completely ignore the person. However this doesn’t only happening the subway. I always found this odd because it made me feel so distant from everyone in the train. There is no connection between people who are literally close to each other, in a physical sense. I sometimes see the same people daily on my way to school in the same station or subway train but never feel the need to have any interactions with them. Compared to a different place that doesn’t rely on public transportation like rural areas; it is more common for people who see each other almost every day to have some form of interaction even if it’s a brief discussion about the weather or a simple hello.
Another means of transportation besides walking are cars. Within New York City, there is a very large culture that involves taxis. If you google search “New York City” it is almost guaranteed that you will see pictures of a sea of yellow taxi cabs. For those in the city who don’t want to take the public transportations such as the bus or the subway, they take the taxi. Within these couple of years, services like Uber and Lyft have also become very popular in cities because they tend to be cheaper than the standard taxis. For people who don’t have subway/bus stations near their area of residence, or own a vehicle to drive, can order an Uber or Lyft through their phone and get to their destination. This concept also affects walkability because taxis and Uber can help people such as tourists or friends navigate around the city without worrying about learning the subway/bus routes.
Other means of transportation isn’t the only factor that affects walkability. According to J. Michael Oakes, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota and conducted a study on the effects of neighborhood density and street connectivity on walking behavior, key environment factors that affect walking are: density, street pattern or connectivity, mixed land uses or the presence of destinations, and pedestrian infrastructure and design related to issues of comfort, safety, and interest. Out of those factors, Oakes believes the two most important contributions to walkability are density and street pattern. Density is important because higher densities affects the way people walk and how safe they feel – more people to walk, to see others walking, to feel safer. Additionally, the higher the density, the more traffic congestion, meaning it is sometimes more convenient to walk to certain places. Street pattern is significant to walkability also because it affects the directness of travel, making travel more or less efficient.
Cities that have developed over the years can also affect the walkability. For instance, Manhattan is a grid, where the streets ascend/descend vertically and avenues increase/decrease horizontally. It is very straightforward to walk through and not get lost in the city, because you can simply look at street signs and know the general direction you need to walk towards. Additionally, the streets of Manhattan are almost always populated, living up to the name of the city that never sleeps, which adds to the cycle of more people walking. These two examples provide evidence to Oakes’ claim on the vital factors of walkability. In “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs, she writes “To keep the city safe is a fundamental task of a city’s streets and its sidewalks.” Jacobs is trying to convey: to keep the city feeling safe for its residents, the streets have a higher density. The pedestrians don’t need to be doing anything actively to protect others, they just need to be present and work like “eyes” to be mindful to keep the streets safe. This is relatable with Manhattan and Oakes’ claim because like mentioned above, Manhattan’s streets are usually never left alone, especially in Lower Manhattan. People who have work, live there, or just simply walk around will always be present in all times of the day. And according the Jane Jacobs, that will prompt the city to be safer. From my weekly walks, whenever I walked around in Manhattan, the most obvious observations were the buildings and the amount of people walking in the streets. A large number of those people were on their way to work and were just mere afterimages. You see them for a couple of seconds and you forget their faces after a couple of minutes. During my time in Manhattan, for high school and college, I didn’t not ever feel safe or protected; there were always people around me and I was never alone. In Lower Manhattan, like Times Square, there are police almost on every block, but according the Jacobs that isn’t the main contribution to the safer streets, it’s the pedestrians and tourists that prevent others from commiting crime.
As a society, we have stopped relying on our primal instincts and have grown into more intellectual beings. We have gone from hunters and gatherers to living in cities and taking the subway to work or school. Walkability is defined as the environment and how it affects the presence of residents, visitors, and possible activities in an area. Evidently, transportation, such as the subway, bus, taxis, and services like Uber or Lyft, does play a significant role in walkability because instead of walking to your destination you can take these alternatives to shorten your time to get to a place. Population density and street pattern according to J. Michael Oakes and Jane Jacobs also affect walkability because the more dense a street or city, the more safer the environment becomes and street patterns can make it easier for pedestrians to walk in, or drive through, streets. Advances in society has added positive contributions and has simplified the way of living compared to how it was centuries ago.
Works Cited
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, Random House, 1961.
Oakes, Michael J. “The effects of neighborhood density and street connectivity on walking behavior: the Twin Cities walking study.” Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations, vol. 4, no. 1, 2007, https://epi-perspectives-biomedcentral-com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/articles/10.1186/1742-5573-4-16. Accessed 18 March 2018.
I enjoy how you identified that there is a connection between the experiences that a person witnessed in a neighbor and how it relates or affects the person’s view on the neighborhood. I also liked how you included a personal story, to better structure and refine your thesis. In your third paragraph, you wrote this, “I have been on the receiving end of communication both good and bad.” I didn’t understand what you were trying to convey, maybe change the word choice/structure. Also, a sentence after that you write, “The first experience I had while walking in Manhattan occurred a few months ago.” Was it your first time walking in Manhattan or your first time experiencing a tourist walk up to you? One thing I noticed that you missed was another source besides your walks and from the readings. If you include another source, it can help fortify your thesis and help you explore more.
Spencer:
I liked how you start your essay and it intrigued me instantly. Your thesis is strong and is very relevant with today’s issues. It’s interesting how you used the planet as our “hood”. Using this, makes it so all of use, humans, should care because it is our home. I also immediately see that you introduce a source that’s not from what we discussed in class or your walks which helps better structure or strengthen your claim. You also break down and analyze what Rachel Carson writes about in her book which is really helpful towards your argument. Something I don’t see is you incorporating your walks into your essay. This can help you create further evidence for your essay. For example, if you’ve seen things that have been affected by global warming in your daily life. You analyze a lot of the source(s) and it really does help fortify your writing. Your essay has helped me better understand what I should do on my essay, which is to analyze my sources more in-depth.
Since the dawn of time, walking has been an essential and integral part of everyday living for humans. Without the ability to walk, meant you lacked the skills to survive independently. Nowadays, the ability to walk isn’t used as frequently with the evolution of technology and the introduction of mass transit and vehicles. The start of focusing on structuring more modern societies and technological advances have separated our distance between walking and surviving. We, as humans have evolved from living in villages and hunting for food to living in cities and working in offices. It is evident that the evolution of our societal structure and the implementations of environmental design has affected our walkability. We now rely less on walking because there are faster and more accessible means of transportation.
As a society, we have stopped relying on our primal instincts and have grew into more intellectual beings. We have gone from hunters and gatherers to living in cities and taking the subway to work or school. We have grown so much and are discovering new ideas or inventions every day. According to J Michael Oakes, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota, believes that the key environment factors that affect walking are: density, street pattern or connectivity, mixed land uses or the presence of destinations, and pedestrian infrastructure and design related to the issues of comfort, safety, and interest. I also agree with Oakes’ claim that these factors do play a role in walkability.
The creation of mass transportation such as trains or buses have played a huge role in affecting walkability in the last couple of centuries. The idea that going to a location to another location would take couple of hours to get to can be shortened by more than half the time is amazing. Obviously, this will affect how people live their lives. For example, in New York City, mass transportation has become a daily part of living. People depend on the public transportation to get to places. Without public transit, many people would not be able to go to their job, school, or a friend’s place. Public transit has made it so much easier for people to get to places and connects the boroughs together. If I wanted to go to school from my home, it would take me approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes, but if I take the subway, it will take me 40 minutes. This does come at a price however, and not talking about the MTA fee but you miss out on looking at things. Meaning you’re stuck inside a subway train with nothing to look at besides the advertisements on the walls or the lights when you look out the window that you pass by every couple of seconds; it is very repetitive and you don’t get to see sights compared to walking. Mass transportation also affects the way people interact. As a person who resides in New York City, mass transportation, like the subway is viewed to get to a place quickly, from point A to point B. There is no need to talk to strangers and interact with them. You don’t need to make any eye contact and have an awkward moment where both of you are looking at each other. Usually to prevent this, people listen to music or sleep on their trip to their destination. There is no connection between people who are literally close to each other, in a physical sense. I sometimes see the same people daily on my way to school in the same station or subway train but never have any interactions with them. Compared to a different place that doesn’t rely on public transportation like rural areas; it is more common for people who see each other almost every day to have some form of interaction even if it’s a brief discussion or a simple hello.
Speaking of New York City, cities that have developed over the years can also affect the walkability. For instance, Manhattan is a grid, where the streets increase/decrease vertically and avenues ascend/descend horizontally. So, it is very easy to walk through and not get lost, because you can simply look at street signs and know the general direction you need to walk towards. Additionally, the streets of Manhattan are almost always populated, living up to the name of the city that never sleeps, and that does play a role in walkability. In “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs, she writes “To keep the city safe is a fundamental task of a city’s streets and its sidewalks.” Jacobs is trying to convey to keep the city feeling safe for its residents, the streets should have others who are there. They don’t need to be doing anything actively to protect others, they just need to be present and work like “eyes” to be mindful and that will cause the city to be safe. This is relatable with Manhattan because like mentioned above, Manhattan’s streets are usually never left alone, especially in the Lower Manhattan. People who have work, live there, or just simply walking will always be present in all times of the day. And according the Jan Jacobs, that will result in the environment being safer. From my weekly walks that I have had to do for the assignments, whenever I did walk around in Manhattan, the most obvious observations were the buildings and the amount of people walking in the streets. A large number of those people were on their way to work and were just mere afterimages. During my time in Manhattan, for high school and college, I didn’t not ever feel safe or protected; there were always people around me and I was never alone. You don’t really hear about crimes being committed in Manhattan since it’s populated with civilians and police.
These two picture were taken the same day and around 4 hours apart. This picture was taken Thursday, the day after another snow storm hit us. I was walking around my neighborhood, the usual route that I take, and it was pretty chilly when I went outside for during the first photo. When I come back outside again, the get groceries, I look outside and most of the snow has disappeared. That Thursday, the temperature was around 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit which is very warm considering we just had a snow storm. Things happen so randomly many times. A couple of hours ago, the ground was mostly snow and ice, now it melts and dries because of the sun and how warm it is. This kind of related with people’s lives too, sudden things can happen within a blink of an eye. Those changes can sometimes be negative, positive, or even irreplaceable. We just need to move on and accept that things will happen to us and we grow from that. I’m just happy that the snow is gone and we can finally get into spring.
