Monday, January 31, 2011

absent public places

Here is an interesting point raised about the fact that in the US, we have phased public squares/pedestrian plazas out of public planning in favor of superhighways...
"...To pluck a story from the Christian tradition, when an injured Jewish traveler was lying along the side of a road, it was the Samaritan, his sworn ethnic enemy, who decided to lend a hand. This scene was Jesus' response to the question "who is your neighbor?" We may like to think of ourselves as similarly generous, but we forget that the Samaritan had to actually walk past the injured man in the first place just to be presented with the dilemma.
 
...this can't happen if we don't build places to facilitate these interactions."

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