Yet Center City is dotted with cosmopolitan canopies such as the Reading Terminal Market and Rittenhouse Square. These are usually calm and relatively pleasant places where a diverse mix of people go about their business, at times self-consciously on good "downtown" behavior. They come to "know" each other without having met, and they can be helpful to complete strangers. Such settings, which no one group expressly owns but which all are encouraged to share - situated under a protective umbrella, or canopy - are a special type of urban space that every visitor seems to recognize, appreciate, and enjoy.
The canopy allows people who identify strongly with class or ethnic groups to work toward a more cosmopolitan appreciation of difference. They discover people who are strangers not just as individuals, but also as representatives of other groups. The canopy can thus be a profoundly humanizing experience.
As canopies proliferate, their qualities become elements of the city. The resulting social sophistication helps diverse people get along.
After violent incidents such as the recent flash mobs, the canopy must recover its reputation as an oasis of comity. Media coverage of these events is unrelenting. As a result, young black men become more defined as people to fear, even though the mobs may be sprinkled with whites. People warily watch for those who might engage in this sort of activity; the figures that readily come to mind are young, black, and male.
