Recently I spend a weekend in New York City with the HealthBridge Livable Cities Program Director. We wandered the streets—and regularly ate—in Jackson Heights, Greenwich Village, SoHo, and the Garment District. We enjoyed the greenery and particularly the people watching in Central Park, Bryant Park, and Washington Square.

In so many cities these days, most people are visibly occupied with their mobile phone; in New York City, there were still lots of people being entertaining, whether intentionally (playing music, demonstrating, giving a speech) or not. This led us to remark that “New York City is where the people are still interesting.”

A couple days later, on a subway, I watched a man raising money to help war veterans, who at the end of his spiel said, “You can see I’m not a bum. Bums don’t wear bowties.”My heart did a little dance of celebration. After all, it would be a terrible tragedy if after all the work that HealthBridge and our marvellous partners around the world are doing to save public spaces, the spaces became less interesting because people are becoming less interesting.