Good call, Fred Kaplan

Three lessons from the Times Square bomb

2. Jane Jacobs is, once again, right. In her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, self-taught urban scholar and activist Jane Jacobs observed that sidewalks and their users are "active participants in the drama of civilization versus barbarism" (by "barbarism," she meant crime) and that a continuously busy sidewalk is a safe sidewalk, because those who have business there —  "the natural proprietors of the street — provide "eyes upon the street." 

Jacobs, who died in 2006, would not have been surprised to learn that it was two street vendors who first notified police of the suspicious Nissan Pathfinder parked on West 45th Street just off Broadway. 

Lane Orton and Duane Jackson, both disabled Vietnam War veterans who were hailed as heroes after their roles in the foiling became clear, have been keeping their "eyes upon the street" for years and%u2014like many of their fellow vendors%u2014have frequently tipped off police to strange and illegal activities.