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URBAN ETIQUETTES

I live in a city because I genuinely like the hustle and verve that assaults me everyday as I move out into the streets. And what I enjoy most is observing what I call the "urban etiquettes," complex dances that allow us citizens to predict what our fellows are going to do and act accordingly. Miss Manners may not agree that these should bear the name of her field, but if an etiquette contains a system of rules that makes people's behaviors somewhat predictable, and therefore manageable, then I walk daily through a thick choreography of mutual accommodation.

A simple one involves just moving through a crowded street. I've always been fascinated by how three dimensional solid bodies can slither along in a press of people and not knock anyone down. But if you watch closely, there are rules about how to occupy your space on the sidewalk, when and where to pass people, how you should broadcast your intentions, and so on. Everyone on that street beams a kind of radar signal that seeks out the apertures between other bodies and guides the walker through. People constantly and unconsciously shift their bodies in a grand game of dodgems, an etiquette of avoidance, that eases each person's passage along the street.

Another example: escalators. No one wrote the rules down, but most everyone understands that "riders" stand off to the right, leaving a passing lane on the left for the "ascenders." Walkers, for their part, must move at a certain pace, faster than a leisurely stroll and without any pauses to catch breaths. If they must pause, they have to move over to the "rider" side. All regulated invisibly by an escalator etiquette.

Subway riding requires a repertoire of etiquettes. One I call the "diminishing circle." On an uncrowded car, people spread away from each other so that their "comfort circle," how close someone can get before discomfort sets in, loops fairly large. As the space fills up, the tolerance for closeness increases as the circle's diameter decreases. But the circle never disappears completely, even when people are packed jowl to jowl. You can see the circle in how people hold onto the overhead bars, their hands spaced with small margins between them. Or the way the seated people sit in their "seat zones," their arms drawn in to match the limits of their widths. This etiquette allows people to be thrown together like luggage without completely losing their dignity. In a crowded city that needs to move around, it's not a bad compromise between necessity and comfort.

There are hundreds of others, and this lace of etiquettes makes it possible for us to get along even if we remain total strangers and indifferent to each other's fates. These etiquettes aren't about politeness *per se* but about making the danger of sharing space with other human beings a tolerable, and sometimes enjoyable, risk. Endlessly supple yet tightly woven, they provide a ground floor for the experiment we call "civilization." If they dissolve, so does the possibility of accomplishing everything else.

Learn more about this author, Michael Bettencourt.
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