ABSTRACT
The perceptive urban writer Jane Jacobs noted years ago how shopkeepers protect the social order of the street. They watch out for crimes, offer school children a safe haven inside their shops, and create an island of familiarity in a world of strangers. On the street where Jacobs lived in New York City, shopkeepers knew many neighbors’ names, accepted packages for them if they were not at home when deliveries arrived, and kept an extra set of their apartment keys for emergencies. Taking on these unpaid responsibilities, business owners and their employees provided local residents with both safety and convenience. If an ecosystem is a complex network with many interrelated parts, all interacting with the surrounding environment, the ecosystem of a local shopping street brings together in one compact physical space the networks of social, economic, and cultural exchange created every day by store owners, their employees, shoppers, and local residents.
