Security and Trust in Times Square

In Times Square in New York, the city’s administration has set out hundreds of red chairs and small tables made of metal. People sit themselves down to relax, converse, watch passers-by and the gigantic advertising screens, log in to the free Wi-Fi, eat ice-cream and drink coffee. The tables and chairs are left in the square overnight. They are not collected up for storage, nor are they locked to lampposts so that they cannot be stolen or used as weapons in fights or for smashing shop windows with. It was the same when I was there a year ago.

During the late night hours, the empty chairs, which the city obviously has no need to chain up, represent the assurance of safety. Even if nighttime increases one’s vigilance, one may transverse the square without anxiety. The night-staffed police station, some hundred meters away, also increases the sense of security.

The contrast with Sergels Square or Kuntradsgarden in Stockholm is striking. And it is principally not a matter of a law enforcement presence — the police can always be chased away by a sufficiently large and aggressive crowd.

There are other reasons for the metal chairs remaining in Times Square. The most easily deduced factor is a combination of trade and commercial culture. Times Square is a marketplace; here global brands and world-unique shows are trotted out for sale. The square is a hub for all the Broadway theaters. The square is one of the most important landmarks for New York’s political leadership. Political and commercial powers have a common interest in allowing Times Square to be visited at all hours of the day and night and the square was therefore given a thorough facelift in the 90s.

But it is not sufficient that powerful interests all pull together. Those who are not businessmen, politicians or city officials — in other words, everyone else — must also desire the same thing.

The more elusive factor is the feeling of belonging and social control in American society, which many can attest to in different contexts. The sense of propriety is expressed more clearly in the United States, even in as anonymous a place as Times Square. The understanding of what is socially acceptable and unacceptable, of duty and obligation ― decorum, in other words ― is clearer in a society where conservative values are strong. To these values belong the importance of behaving oneself and not damaging either private or public property.

On the other side of the road from the red chairs and tables, at the intersection of 45th Street and Broadway, the Minskoff Theatre is found. Here, the musical version of the Lion King is still playing, a typical American tale of exacting ethics and respect for traditional values, to a full house every day since its premier in 1997. It was at the theatre’s entrance that the unsuccessful Times Square bomber, Faisal Shazad, parked his car bomb on May, 1 2010, while the Lion King was playing. And his intention was perhaps also more than to murder as many people as possible.