We fill our days with slots. 9:00 AM meeting. 6:00 PM dinner. The city is often presented to us as a series of destinations to be reached on time. We rush from point A to point B, heads down, checking the transit app, optimizing the route.
But the real life of a city doesn’t happen in the appointments. It happens in the margins.
It is the decision to walk the long way home because the light is hitting the old brick buildings just right. It is the coffee that turns into a conversation with the person at the next table because neither of you are looking at your watches. It is the moment you stop to watch a street musician and realize ten other people have stopped too, creating a temporary, silent bond on a busy corner.
We often mistake efficiency for living. But efficiency is for machines; cities are for people. There is a specific kind of magic that only happens when we are not in a hurry.
– The bookshop you duck into to escape the rain – The extra ten minutes spent sitting on a park bench – The “hello” that turns into “how are you”
These are the cracks where the light gets in. When we stop rushing, we stop being just traffic. We become inhabitants. We allow the place to surprise us.
“Efficiency is for machines; cities are for people.”
We are learning to leave a little room for the unplanned. To treat the schedule as a suggestion, not a law. Because it is in these empty spaces that the unexpected connections take root.
This is how a crowd slowly becomes a neighborhood.