I think about cities in terms of "structures vs spaces;" buildings vs streets or enclosures vs commons
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The commons/streets, by contrast, are open to everyone; a street is "owned" by whoever is occupying it at any given point in time
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With the exception of limited-access highways (which are more like structures than spaces), any street is open to any mode...
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...but the sort of mode which predominates on the street--which most consistently and thoroughly occupies it--will call the shots
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Narrow streets are inherently more democratic because they are much more easily occupied by people on foot, without vehicles
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Napoleon III knew this perfectly well when he hired Haussmann, and that was well before the car came along
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This rambling train of thought makes me look at Japanese street festivals in an entirely new light: as a sort of local-rule guarantee
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Everyone shows up, occupies the local commons, celebrates a bit, and if that celebration gets in the way of non-local traffic, too bad!
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It's a way of reaffirming who and what the commons is for, year after year
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End of conversation
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Are urban trains also democratic? Access is usually open, platform to platform, rather than “enclosure.”
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not democratic in the sense I'm talking about here; a railway requires immense capital and organization to be built, operated, maintained
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Social democratic, then.
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they can have a low barrier to use depending on how many people they carry vs how expensive they are to maintain, but...
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...they have an insanely high barrier to entry (read: it is much harder to make your own railway than to use someone else's)
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Whereas streets (spaces) have zero barrier to use and zero barrier to entry; anyone can show up on them and everywhere not enclosed is one
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