On the importance of a culture............

     The first thing to understand is that the public peace - the sidewalk and street peace - of cities is not kept primarily by police, as necessary as police are.  It is primarily kept by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.  In some city areas - older public housing projects and streets with very high population turnover are often conspicuous examples - the keeping of public sidewalk law and order is left almost entirely to the police and special guards.  Such places are jungles.  No amount of police can enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down.

-Jane Jacobs,  The Death And Life Of Great American Cities,  1961