What Happened to Hanging Out on the Street?

January 23, 2025 | Source: Bloomberg | by David Zipper

Are city streets places for pedestrians to hang out, or are they routes to be traversed as quickly as possible?

Americans are increasingly treating them as the latter rather than the former.

That is the striking implication of a recent interdisciplinary study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Applying modern artificial intelligence techniques to old video footage, the researchers compared pedestrian activity in 1980 and 2010 across prominent locations in Boston, New York City and Philadelphia. Their unsettling conclusion: American ambulators walked faster and schmoozed less than they used to. They seemed to be having fewer of the informal encounters that undergird civil society and strengthen urban economies.

The study was conducted by a team of eight researchers with diverse backgrounds, including Harvard economist Ed Glaeser, Michigan State communications professor Keith Hampton, and MIT urban technologist Carlo Ratti. Its lead author, Yale School of the Environment professor Arianna Salazar-Miranda, told me she was inspired by the work of William H. Whyte, a journalist and urban observer who examined how people in cities used slivers of public space. Whyte turned his insights into a film as well as a 1980 book, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, which has become a classic of urban planning. Among his other influences, you can credit (or blame) Whyte for the widespread public space deployment of moveable metal chairs, which he often praised for their malleable utility.