City's Organization: A View from Above and Below

New York, although well-known for being a city of fastidious progress and intricate precision, is controlled more by the whims of its inhabitants. Michel de Certeau states in his essay "Walking in the City" that “the city becomes the dominant theme in political legends, but it is no longer a field of programmed and regulated operations” (130). Cities are created with rules and regulations, meant to be followed as to retain control over what can easily become a dangerous mess. One example of how city regulations, although with intentions to keep order, have been ousted by the city’s dwellers is the mechanical process of crossing the street. The New York grid system was made with one-way streets to facilitate crossing without fear of incoming traffic. E.B. White notices, in his Writings From the New Yorker, that after checking the direction in which traffic comes from, New Yorkers “always, just before stepping out into the street, also cast one small, quick, furtive look in the opposite direction—from which no cars could possible come” (195). It is human nature to break rules, leaving it impossible to trust even the most intricately conceived road-system in New York.