To Read: Walking New York

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A profile of a New York sociology professor who spent four years walking one hundred and twenty thousand blocks (6,000 miles) in New York City, seeking to reveal the "New York Nobody Knows"

Helmreich has a theory about what gives New York’s hundreds of communities cohesion: a sense of possibility and pride. “They’re united by the feeling that they live in the world’s greatest city. This is a village, but there’s one thing that’s very important about this village.” He pointed down a narrow street to where a city bus was idling. “That bus brings you to the Empire State Building in forty minutes. It doesn’t do that in other places.”

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