Tom Vanderbilt in Slate:
They both understood the importance of street corners. On The Wire, drug slingers battle for control of Baltimore’s choicest retail outlets; “them corners” offer strategic advantage: double the traffic, better sightlines, more escape routes, and the presence of businesses, magnets for potential customers.
Several decades earlier, Whyte, in his films of New York City street life, identified the street corner as an important factor in urban dynamics. Here was a zone of serendipity where people encountered one another beneath the blinking walk man, where they paused to chat before parting, where they formed small convivial islands just as pedestrian flow was surging most strongly. Even today, corners offer new uses; one often finds people talking there on their mobile devices, either held up by the signal or forgetting to move after the signal has changed. Either way, the corner is urban punctuation, a place to pause, essential to the whole civic grammar.
More here.