The freedom of a square

The April 7th issue of the New York Review of Books has an article by Michael Kimmelman entitled, " The Craving for Public Squares." It is one of those insightful two-pagers by someone who both notices the world and writes well enough to link us to it. It is part meditation on the subject and part historical perspective. He had me when he wrote,

Squares reaffirm our commonality, our shared sense of place, and our desire to be included. "It's why we congregate near the kitchen at a dinner party instead of the living room," is how Andy Wiley-Schwatrz, who directed the plaza program during the Bloomberg administration, described to me the attraction of the square. "That's where you see people coming and going to the fridge to grab a beer and watch stuff happen.