I walked them around the corner to the stop for a bus that would take them exactly there. They’d asked directions to a subway station a mile away for a train that didn’t go where they wanted to go. Just the other day, at noon, I gave directions to four women who live in a village in the mountains outside Barcelona. Amidst the triumphalist rhetoric about contemporary cities, it feels important to remember that their most vital workings are rooted in human encounters at once palpable and mundane. Looking at a city through the lens of directions - of people asking and giving, enacting a kind of unsung civic ritual - helps us consider what’s ailing American cities, even those we claim to have revived. I’ve also come to think of directions as emblematic of what makes America’s urban environments work, and what makes them falter and break down. I’ve come to think of directions as one of the most gratifying aspects of city life, an elegant and utilitarian intersection of the human need to both seek and give help. Amidst the triumphalist rhetoric about American cities, it’s important to remember that their vital workings are rooted in encounters at once palpable and mundane. Most obviously it’s tourists who need directions, but in Brooklyn on Monday mornings it’s not hard to spot someone worried about arriving on time for an interview, looking for connections to a train or a bus. Lately I’ve watched route-seeking people outside train stations in downtown Cleveland and along Congress Street in Austin and in Pittsburgh near the station on Liberty Street, where I sought directions myself. I love watching the give-and-get of directions, and not only in my neighborhood.
Residents and commuters, tourists and students, the court officers and transit workers and security guards wearing name tags - we’re all ready to assist, to direct. It’s a busy, crowded neighborhood, in downtown Brooklyn, and direction-givers are everywhere.
Not just occasionally they ask constantly, every day.
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