William H. Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

In 1980, a movie narrated by a sociologist once described as Jimmy Stewart’s urban planner cousin, and full of surveillance footage of the city's public spaces, delivered perhaps the richest and wisest look ever made at how New Yorkers use the city's public spaces. Municipal Art Society president Keri Butler joins Amy Sohn and Harry Siegel to discuss the film, Whyte's zen koans about public spaces that have stood the test of time in a technologically transformed world, and much more.