> To explain the troubling effect of strangers on the streets of city gray areas, I shall first point out, for purposes of analogy, the peculiarities of another and figurative kind of street - the corridors of high-rise public housing projects, those derivatives of Radiant City. The elevators and corridors of these projects are, in a sense, streets. They are streets piled up in the sky in order to eliminate streets on the ground and permit the ground to become deserted parks like the mall at Washington Houses where the tree was stolen.<p>Not only are these interior parts of the building streets in the sense that they serve the comings and goings of residents, most of whom may not know each other or recognize, necessarily, who is a resident and who is not. They are streets also in the sense of being accessible to the public. They have been designed in an imitation of upper-class standards for apartment living without upper-class cash for doormen and elevator men. Anyone at all can go into these buildings, unquestioned, and use the traveling street of the elevator and the sidewalks that are the corridors. These interior streets, although completely accessible to public use, are closed to public view and thus lack the checks and inhibitions exerted by eye-policed city streets.<p>From "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", Chapter 2: "The uses of sidewalks: safety", Jane Jacobs