The Sociable City

Guest: Jamin Rowan, PhD, Author, “The Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition,” Assistant Professor of English, Brigham Young University When you walk through Manhattan’s Central Park you can forget that you’re in a city of more than 8 million people. Central Park was designed to shut out the city and the crowds. Compare that with New York City’s new High Line park, which takes in sweeping city views and is nestled right between buildings on an old elevated rail track. It embraces the city. The two parks represent opposing views of what parks and housing developments in the city should do: Should they provide refuge from the city or should they cultivate the street and sidewalk life that already exists in dense urban cities? Those are the questions at the heart of “The Sociable City.”