U Is for Urbanism

0:00This is 99 % Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

0:07A good neighborhood should accomplish a number of important functions. A good neighborhood keeps people safe. A good neighborhood makes you feel like you're a part of something. A good neighborhood makes the lives of its residents just generally good. Not all of us were lucky enough to grow up in a neighborhood like that. But for over half a century, millions and millions of kids around the world at least got to experience it through their television sets. Sunny day, sleeping the clouds away On my way to where the air is free Getting down the house and get How to get to Sesame Street I think it has formed so many children's views of the world and how to interact with people and how they think life should be.

1:04This is Anna Koday. She's a journalist who covers the built environment and public space for The New York Times. Like, it's actually shaped not only children's education, but also our physical built environment. Like, at this point, there are actual streets that are renamed Sesame Street in cities across America. Recently, she wrote about one of the most influential city blocks in the world, Sesame Street. Like millions of other kids, Anna grew up an Elmo fan, which is what kind of inspired the article. I selfishly wanted to see the set of Sesame Street. So I was like, how can I come up with a story that fits into my beat?

1:46Is there just something fun and silly we could do with one of the Muppets? Could Elmo show us around his apartment, like an apartment tour? By the way, I'd 100 % watch the Elmo Architectural Digest tour. I was thinking more and more and I was like, we don't really see that much of his home. It's not really about that. It's more like the neighborhood and the community. For over 50 years, Sesame Street has been teaching children language, math and core development lessons. But Anna contends that the show has also been quietly educating kids about good urbanism and what a healthy neighborhood should look like.

2:24After my article came out, I had a lot of people reach out and say, you know, I think this is why I always wanted to live in a walkable neighborhood was because I watched Sesame Street growing up. And that kind of shaped my idea of how life should be. And what's funny is like on the show, you see Muppets, you see children and you see adults. So you have all these different ways of kind of imagining life. But in order for us to tell you how to get to Sesame Street, we first need to begin with a woman named Joan Gans Cooney. Research is woven into the total fabric of the show. Every segment is being tested and evaluated by the toughest critics of all, the children themselves.

3:08I think it's fair to say that by the time our program goes on the air, it will be the most thoroughly researched show in the history of the medium. Joan Ganz Cooney was this media executive. She had just won an Emmy for this documentary she'd done on the War on Poverty program. And yeah, naturally, cute little monsters are next. No, but she viewed television as this tool to effect change. Cooney was a former journalist turned television producer who was galvanized by so many of the social issues plaguing 1960s America. and working on the documentary made Cooney deeply aware of the inequalities in early childhood education specifically.

3:52In 1966, the same year she won the Emmy, she worked on this study called The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education. Television programming at the time was described as a, quote, vast wasteland by the then FCC chairman. But Cooney realized that if television was already capturing the attention of children across the country, that power could be harnessed and put to good use, particularly if it were a television show for young children. She wrote that more households have televisions than bathtubs, telephones, vacuum cleaners, toasters, or a regular daily newspaper. So she viewed this TV as this tool that everyone had, this accessible way to educate people, and especially kids.

4:42This study led to the creation of the Sesame Street Workshop. When the workshop goes on the air, the puppets you'll see in the film will be joined by real people who will set each segment into the proper learning context, recognition of the letters of the alphabet, numbers, basic reasoning skills, and a better awareness of themselves and the world around them. Another person worth mentioning here is John Stone, who is also one of the early creators of the show. John Stone was a writer, producer and director and had a huge hand in shaping the look and feel of what Sesame Street would eventually become.

5:19According to Stone, he drew his inspiration from one of the most unlikely sources, New York City. The subways are crummy and they're dangerous. You get pushed, you get shoved. Sometimes you get mugged. Well, I guess I'll pull back a little bit. The city was not doing well at the time and people were not viewing the city positively at the time. In the late 1960s, New York City was struggling with crime rates and social unrest. People were leaving the city in droves. There was riots and at the same time, suburbs are starting to grow and we're in this post-war housing boom. and wealthy white people are moving out to the suburbs in hordes.

6:04And this would later be called white flight, of course. All that is to say that cities were not viewed as the place to be at that time, especially New York people who could leave and who wanted to leave were in fact leaving. But around this time in 1968, a public service campaign was launched by the New York Urban Coalition to convince people to care about the city's blighted neighborhoods and to stop leaving town. It was called the Give a Damn campaign. Almost half of all non-whites are forced to live in substandard housing. You can help them through the New York Urban Coalition. And there was a television ad that was part of it.

6:41It showed children playing in gutters in Harlem. And it had the tagline again, Give a Damn. Give jobs, give money, give a damn. John Stone, who was working on Sesame Street, He didn't have a clear idea of what it was going to be at the time, but he's working on this children's show and he's kind of watching the TV and he sees this ad and it's this like epiphany moment for him. He's like, wait, I've got it. It needs to be set on a city streets. And actually, so after my article came out, his children wrote to me and like I would have loved to have interviewed him if he was still alive. But his children wrote saying that he loved to tell the story of like when he had the idea to set the show on a street, the color from Joan's face just drained.

7:31She was just like, wait, what? How are we going to do that?

7:37Stone and his set designer scouted locations around Harlem, the Upper West Side, and the Bronx to build an amalgam of what the brownstone of 123 Sesame Street would look like, and chose not to polish away some of the rougher details. There's trash. There's like wheat paste posters. There's, I mean, Oscar lives in a trash can. And I mean, it's not just that he lives in the trash can. There's like actual litter on the streets. And the brownstone is not this like pristine brownstone. It has soot on the sides. And you can see that it just looks like a real city street. They didn't beautify it. But in a way, a New York City block was really the only place Stone and Cooney could have set a show like Sesame Street.

8:23And this was because of who they were trying to reach. The show was very much aimed at closing the achievement gap, right? They wanted to reach and educate inner-city children, impoverished children. And the way to do that, according to Stone, is to create this environment that they're familiar with. He wanted to create an environment that would look familiar to them and look like home to them. But what's going on is not riots and crime and all this awful stuff. It's this like harmonious, integrated, happy little village where people get along. And if they have problems, they will resolve them with each other.

9:06During a time when the city's reputation was mixed at best, Sesame Street deliberately chose to portray the more positive aspects of living in a place like New York City. It depicted an inner city neighborhood that worked. And in doing so, the show found itself aligned with the ideas of one of the most prominent advocates of vibrant urban communities, the writer and activist Jane Jacobs. Some things are said so often that nobody thinks of what they mean anymore. For instance, for years we've been hearing, take the children off the streets. Off the streets and into where? Although we haven't had a specific Jane Jacobs episode of 99PI, her influence touches nearly every story we cover on the show.

9:53Jacobs wasn't an urban planner at all. She was a resident of Greenwich Village who saw firsthand how slum clearance and revitalization efforts in the 1950s devastated communities. Instead, she championed mixed-use pedestrian-friendly cities and a community-based approach to urban planning. Jane Jacobs is this great observer of urban life. She's an expert noticer of what's going on in the city. And she's just paying attention to things in her own neighborhood in Manhattan. And she's writing down all these interactions that a lot of people are familiar with, but have kind of taken for granted. In 1961, Jacobs compiled these observations and released a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

10:40It's just one of those books that becomes part of the zeitgeist. It is hugely popular, hugely influential. The same way the concepts from The Feminine Mystique are in the air, the concepts from this book are also in the air. It's like the Bible for urbanists. In the book, Jacobs took aim at urban planners like Robert Moses, who didn't understand how neighborhoods actually functioned. Instead of bulldozing, rebuilding, and further segregating neighborhoods, she believed that city planners should consider the needs of the residents. Suppose we actually let the sidewalks do the job that they can do best.

11:17And suppose we stop trying to provide poor substitutes for them. The death and life of great American cities was almost a love letter to what the city was already doing right. And in it, she identified a set of conditions that she observed every thriving city was built on. And because the creators of Sesame Street were depicting what a healthy urban neighborhood looks like, you can actually see Jane Jacobs' principles playing out as you watch the show. Sesame Street ends up being this blueprint for a Jane Jacobsian utopia almost. You have so many different principles that she outlined in her book play out on that actual block.

11:59And I think that's because the actual block of Sesame Street very closely mirrors a real New York block. This next section is brought to you by the number four, because there are four different conditions that Jane Jacobs believed were key to a vibrant block. Starting with condition number one. A neighborhood should have multiple functions. I mean, it's a mixed-use neighborhood. You have your laundromat. You have your convenience store, grocery store. You have a multifamily apartment building. You have everything you need there. It'll never be totally dead and empty. Like, you'll have people going off to work, but then you'll have someone coming in to go shopping.

12:45And then you'll have people, like kids out on the street playing. It'll always kind of be lively that way. Condition number two. City blocks should be short. The beauty of the blocks being short, especially on Sesame Street, is that you have more contact with people in a real city, too. That's the case, right? When blocks are shorter, it allows for many different paths and many different experiences and many different casual encounters for pedestrians. You're turning corners all the time and you're seeing new things. And it's just more, I'm trying to think of a better way to say it, but it's more dynamic that way.

13:20Condition number three. There is a need for old buildings. New buildings and old buildings must mingle in a single district. In case you didn't quite catch that, the third condition is there is a need for aged buildings, and both old and new buildings must mingle together in a single district. This is because new buildings are expensive and rent reflects construction costs. If a neighborhood only has new buildings, the cost drives out diversity of businesses and people who can afford to stay there. You could see this dynamic playing out on Sesame Street. There was a redesign in the 90s, and the set designers added a new hotel, a new apartment building, and the brownstone was still there.

14:04And one of the designers at the time said it was, and this is his quote, he said it was meant to look like a survivor of gentrification. electrification. But I say that to say you have this mix of the new and the old on Sesame Street. Condition number four. Don't want to do it anymore. You're just making me say stuff. Why can't I say whatever I want? Our kid narrators are clearly coming apart at the seams, so I'll handle this last one. The fourth condition is that a neighborhood should have a dense concentration of people. This is key to a healthy city because high density supports the local businesses of a mixed-use neighborhood.

14:43And having more eyes on the streets helps keep them safer. Like all of these principles are intertwined, right? Like the dense concentration of people also goes hand in hand with the neighborhood serving multiple functions. Like you have people just living there and maybe doing their laundry. And then you also have people working there like Mr. Hooper. So there's always at any given time a lot of people there. Jacobs believed that when these four conditions come together, cities become safer, more economically stable, more diverse, and more alive. And that when that happens, you can see it all unfolding on the sidewalk level.

15:18Jacobs even identified a type of spontaneous dance that pedestrians unknowingly perform when all these elements align. The sidewalk ballet. The sidewalk ballet is the term that Jane Jacobs coined to refer to all of those casual, improvised interactions that will happen in the public sphere of the sidewalk. It's the systematic dance of neighbors, shopkeepers, kids, workers, and strangers moving through shared space, recognizing familiar faces, having spontaneous conversations, and watching out for one another. It's the visible manifestation of a neighborhood that's working the way it should. You can think about walking down a city block and you'll see a mom pushing a stroller.

16:05You'll see the shopkeeper rolling up their gate and opening for the day. You'll see someone walking their dog. Maybe you see a neighbor you know. And it's all of these people passing you by and maybe you're saying hello. We actually see the sidewalk ballet playing out in the very first scene of the very first episode of Sesame Street. Sally, you've never seen a street like Sesame Street. Everything happens here. You're going to love it. Gordon is one of the few human characters on the show, and he owns the 123 Sesame Street brownstone with his wife, Susan. In this first scene, Gordon is showing a new neighbor, a young girl named Sally, around the block.

16:46And he's like, hi, there's Mr. Hooper. Oh, there's Big Bird. Hello, Big Bird. Oh, hi, Gordon. How are you? A man buys a newspaper from Mr. Hooper. Gordon's wife Susan pops her head out of the window to say hello. Oh, you just moved in, huh? Yeah. Well, will you come back and see me later and have some milk and cookies with me? Okay, I'll see you later. You're seeing children play on the street, and it's like the quintessential sidewalk ballet. Just little moments of human interaction that are unplanned and pretty minor, but altogether they make you feel like you're part of something greater. And we see that all the time on Sesame Street.

17:24Jane Jacobs, much like the characters on Sesame Street, taught us that a strong neighborhood can't just be built from the top down. And that, quote, cities have the capability of providing something for everybody only because and only when they are created by everybody. end quote. But of course, not every urban planner bought into this community-driven vision. And while Jane Jacobs came up against Robert Moses, Sesame Street faced Ronald Grump. Mr. Grump, we want to talk to you about your plans for Sesame Street. My plans? See for yourself.

18:02Out of the ruins of Sesame Street rises the gleaming Tower of Grump. Where's 123 Sesame Street? I'm glad you asked that. It is now a luxurious boutique called If You Have to Ask, You Cannot Afford It. Yes, that is the voice of Joe Pesci playing Ronald Grump. Ronald Grump is a real estate developer, perhaps inspired by someone in the real world. And he's played by Joe Pesci and he comes onto Sesame Street and he's got these plans for this glamorous new tower that he wants to build. and all the Muppets start freaking out. And they're like, what do we do? We're going to get kicked out of our homes.

18:42You can't do this to Sesame Street. It's a special place. Of course, because this is a children's show, the residents of Sesame Street were eventually able to overcome the terrible Ronald Grump and save their brownstone. But it isn't just the characters on Sesame Street who have faced existential threats. The show itself has had to navigate several over the years. Since Sesame Street is partly funded by public money and depicts a diverse cast in an urban setting, it's been accused of being overtly political. I was looking specifically when I was researching this article, criticism of the set in particular.

19:17And the main thing I found on that was from the right-wing pundit, Ben Shapiro, of course. And he called the set dingy. So this is what he said. Unlike other children's shows, Sesame Street took place in a dingy setting, an urban neighborhood street. One of the characters, Oscar the Grouch, lived in a garbage can. And then he also says that the show is about legitimizing urban liberal lifestyles. It really seems like he's viewing any urban block, even a fictional one, as part of this big city liberal kind of idea. Because the show has been such a beloved institution for over half a century, Sesame Street has been somewhat immune to attacks like these.

20:02But right now, public media is under threat. And Sesame Street has gotten caught up in a culture war with a lot of casualties. I think there was a point where people would be too scared to touch something as beloved as Sesame Street. But the fear of that has gone out the window pretty much. Sesame Street is facing probably its biggest challenge in decades, which is a shame. Because at a time when Americans increasingly don't know their neighbors and communities feel more fractured than ever, Sesame Street still shows us something different. A block where people of all backgrounds actually talk to each other, look out for each other, share space not just peacefully, but joyfully.

20:47That vision feels almost radical now. And maybe depicting that gap between idealism and reality has always been the point. You know, I think Sesame Street is very idealistic. I think the creators wanted to give children a vision of how urban life could be. But there's also a power within that kind of idealism, I would say. The strongest example of that idealism came from the actor Loretta Long, who played Susan, the owner of the 123 Sesame Street Brownstone. And this is what she said in her memoir. Not only were we a Black married couple, we also owned that house. We had some strange tenants like Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and Ernie and Bert.

21:38But we were landlords, which was not the typical case for Black families on television. And I think that kind of tells you why it's important to be idealistic at times. It's already a show that has little monsters running around, right? Like, why not show something like Black home ownership? The stories we tell our children shape what they believe is possible. So whether those stories are that they deserve to own a home one day, or that they have the power to build better cities, or that kindness matters, Luckily, we have Sesame Street to tell them. After the break, I speak with architecture critic Alexandra Lange about her Pulitzer Prize-winning essays on children and urban spaces.

22:24Stay with us.

22:29Welcome back. All this talk about Sesame Street has got us thinking more about kids and design, so we wanted to have frequent contributor Alexandra Lange back on the show. She is the author of The Design of Childhood. And like me, Alexandra loves Sesame Street. She told us her favorite moment is the cartoon where a mother sends her kid to the grocery store for three very specific items. Now don't forget a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. I won't forget. I remember. A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.

23:09Mr. could I have a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and, and, hey, I can't remember. You know, so much of what I write about is about giving children independence. Like, it's right there in the subtitle of my book. And this little clip just, I feel, perfectly illustrates why it's so empowering for kids to have independence. Like the kid is so fixed on this activity. Like we've all seen kids try, you know, so hard to be just that much more grown up and giving them opportunities like this to be independent. Like that's it illustrates it perfectly. So, Alexandra, you hold the record for the most appearances of a guest expert on 99 % Invisible.

23:57And a lot has happened since the last time we had you on, including that you won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, which is amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. It still feels quite unbelievable to me, too. And specifically, you won the Pulitzer Prize for your writing about design and childhood. That's right. Yeah, it was a whole series for Bloomberg City Lab on building more family-friendly cities. Nice. Well, congratulations again. It's just so much fun to watch your success. And I love your work and that's why you're on so much. And so it's a delight to see other people recognize it and enjoy it as much as we do.

24:37But I want to talk a little bit about design and childhood while we're in this space of Sesame Street and urban spaces. And one of the things you identify in you're reporting in particular, is that there's a lot of design that's hostile to teens. Like young children get a little bit of support. Respectable adults get some support in public spaces. Teens have lots of places cut off to them, particularly in public spaces. Can you talk about that problem? It's like playgrounds by and large are designed for children from zero to 12. And And parents and caregivers get really uncomfortable if teenagers come into those playgrounds and start getting loud, start climbing on the play equipment in some ways that are unorthodox, etc.

25:27And meanwhile, you know, adults who run corner stores, you know, adults who run other kinds of semi-public places also don't want teens hanging out because they think they're not going to spend money and they're also going to scare off the adults. And then on top of all of that, people keep saying, you know, teenagers in America are having a mental health crisis and don't exercise enough and don't leave the house and are playing too many video games. And it's just like, really, like, what do you want the teenagers to do? Where do you want them to go? And so, yeah, I've tried a lot in my work to advocate for teenagers not being scary, but also to describe the kind of places that teenagers actually like and, you know, kind of might want to be out there in the world.

26:15And one of the places you describe in your book was designed by a design studio called WRT Design. They made an amenity that goes against this trend of excluding teens and, you know, made a park or designed a park that was really kind of teen friendly. Actually, it's kind of open to all people. But the fact that it focuses a little bit on teens is what's particularly notable about it. And it was this FDR Park in Philadelphia. So what did they make? So, yeah, it's the Anna C. Verna Playground in FDR Park. which was designed by WRT and Studio Ludo, who are kind of a playground design expert firm.