Assignment 3 Benjamin Hom

For this activity, I decided to observe the Village. I believed that if there was any place that would have distinguishable differences between public and private places, it would be the Village. On a Tuesday after noon at about 3' o clock, I made my trip. When I emerged from the West 4th train station, I immediately spotted the first public place. It was this little basketball court that was across the street from a McDonald's. It was packed with people, which was obvious because the weather was beautiful. Many people were playing basketball, but many more were just standing around or leaning on the gates just talking. The park was open to everyone. There was nobody regulating whether or not people were using the basketball court to play basketball or anyone there in general to monitor admission to the court so it was obviously a public place. It was also an obvious gathering place. I then looked around me at the long strip of tattoo parlors and "adult" shops that were adjacent to the park, and wondered if they were public, private or both. Anyone could go into them, granted that they were of age, but they served purposes that must be adhered to. You have to be a consumer to spend a certain amount of time there. It is open to browsing, but you can only browse so much. These places I would consider a mix.

I walked a little east to discover Washington Square Park, another public, gathering place. It was huge and undergoing quite a bit of construction. People of all ages were in the park; children, teenagers, adults, and the elderly. The park itself is surrounded by four blocks of all private places. NYU was on one side, and a lot of private residences on the other three sides. More people were walking through the park than the streets in front of these private places. After the park, I walked back west up to the Charles Street. I walked down Charles Street and it was a lot more quiet and a lot less inhabited than the main streets. The only people that were on these streets were only passing through. These were all beautiful private residences. As I kept walking down Charles Street, I realized that the blocks were becoming less and less commercial and more and more residential.

I went back on a Saturday night to make more observations. It was around 9:30, and I observed almost the same type of trends. The only difference was that the change in the number of people was much more apparent. Both parks and the main commercial streets were three times as packed than it was on the previous Tuesday. Also, the general age changed too. Most people I saw were in their 20s and 30s. There were hardly any children present. When I took the walk down Charles Street this time, I noticed the same exact trend. I saw a little more people on these residential blocks, but compared to the main streets these were ghost streets.