Response: City's Organization

My favorite example of White's urban dwellers challenging the power of city planners was his depiction of city gabagemen. I found it to be an exteremly honest representation of New york City garbagemen. The way White described them driving "like a ward boss through red lights and green, and backs his truck over the crossing with more privilege than a baby carriage on Fifth Avenue. He is as masterful as a pirate and chock-full of gusto...They have the town by the tail and they know it." This strikes me as a very apt description of NY garbagemen, considering my own experience. The other example, a more subtle one, was the description of New yorkers crossing the street the "furtive look in the opposite direction -from which no cars could possibly come...it is an indication that people can never quite trust the self-inflicted cosmos, and that they dimly suspect that some day, in the maze of well-regulated vehicules and strong, straight buildings, something will go completely craz-something big and red and awful will come tearing through town gong the wrong way on the one-ways mowing down all the faithful and the meek. Even if it's only fire engine." This is a subtle representation of the urban dwellers challenge to city planners. I would characterize the relationship between White's texts and the rest of the city as being very honest. White evokes the small things about New York in these texts that only a native New Yorker would consider or even be aware of.