Curiosity, Courtesy, and the Sidewalk Ballet

Anthony Bourdain once quipped, “If I have a single virtue, it’s curiosity. It’s a big world.” 

I’m with him. I think it’s my curiosity about cities—what makes them tick, why I feel safe or welcome in some places and not in others—that drew me to urban planning, not the other way around.

When The 99% Invisible City was described as “a bible for the urban curious,” I grabbed onto the phrase immediately. That’s how this became The Urban Curious Blog. It’s a term roomy enough to hold fascination, observation, and the pleasure of noticing the hidden systems that shape our daily lives.

Plenty of people who claim urban planning is “boring” will happily devour Spacing Magazine’s book, 50 Hidden Gems & Curiosities of Toronto. They’re urban curious. They just don’t know it yet.

But a small moment on a rainy sidewalk last week has been needling me. The small thing lodged in my mind and grew: maybe being urban courteous matters more than being urban curious.

I was speed-walking to an appointment along a narrow stretch of sidewalk. To the right, a decorative retaining wall held up a park well above road level. To the left, a wedge of marshy grass separated the pavement from two wide lanes of traffic. Half the sidewalk — the side near the grass — was flooded with puddles.

Ahead of me walked two high school students, backpacks slung, moving with that half-shuffle of teenagers in conversation. The dry portion of sidewalk could fit one person comfortably, two if they squeezed. Not three.

Coming toward us was a jogger. She looked to be in her sixties, and she was making her way through the drizzle with admirable resolve. To my no-cardio-in-precipitation philosophy, she was heroic.

The teens didn’t register her. They walked side by side, neither slipping behind the other nor stepping briefly onto the grass. I watched her tiptoe-jog straight through the puddles, her running shoes getting soaked. When I stepped off the sidewalk entirely to let her pass, she flashed me a grateful smile.

Cities run on thousands of tiny, almost invisible acts of spatial negotiation. A shoulder angled. A step shortened. A pause half a second long. These gestures allow millions of strangers to share limited space without friction. Urban life depends less on brilliance than on this quiet, everyday grace.

Urban life isn’t made only of visionary plans or sweeping policies. It’s made of inches, or centimetres, of civility. Of someone tucking in behind a friend so another body can pass. Of the quiet choreography that keeps strangers from colliding. We don’t write bylaws for that. We don’t teach it in planning school. Yet it determines whether a city feels tense or generous.

Sidewalk width, drainage, and design matter, of course. But even the best-designed city falters if its users don’t practise a kind of spatial empathy.

Watching those teens, I didn’t feel judgment. I felt curiosity of a different kind. What teaches people to scan their surroundings — to read a sidewalk the way we read a screen? Courtesy isn’t just politeness; it’s awareness. It’s noticing that your presence affects the comfort of strangers.

I’ve always drilled traffic hierarchy into my kids: pedestrians first, then cyclists, then transit, with private vehicles bringing up the rear. But courtesy doesn’t stop at crosswalks. What about the responsibilities of pedestrians to one another? Of cyclists to walkers? Of all of us sharing tight urban space?

Courtesy is the social grease of dense places. Without it, every encounter becomes a negotiation. With it, the city hums.

Maybe urban curiosity draws us into cities. But urban courtesy is what lets us stay.