During New York's two hundred years of racial slavery, the streets became important spaces of control and resistance. Whether it was in Albany, Kingston, or New York City, enslavers monitored and regulated enslaved people's activities in the streets. Indeed, white New Yorkers claimed to own these streets and turned them into what sociologist Elijah Anderson calls “white space" in which Black people were tolerated, but only if they could be controlled. In these streets, Black people were always considered suspect, and they could be subjected to searches, interrogations, or even violent attacks. This paper shows how white New Yorkers used design, legal restrictions, surveillance, patrols, architecture, and public punishments to create such white spaces by turning streets into geographies of control. At the same time, Black New Yorkers developed alternative ways of navigating these streets, thus creating geographies of resistance. This paper, then, explores the ways in which white New Yorkers tried to control Black New Yorkers in these streets, and how enslaved people managed to escape such control, even if only temporarily. In doing so, it shows that white New Yorkers' claims to owning the streets were never absolute.  

As the most ubiquitous, pan-cultural and open public space network, the street has the capacity to be the place of diversity and difference that gives the right to visibility, recognition for self-identity, dignity and respect, and a sense of belonging to all. If we look closely, there are urban public spaces that defy or at least resist the common populist trends. Examining urban neighborhood commercial streets in many cultural contexts reveals that even though the contemporary urban street can never be an unregulated place of unconstrained diversity, there are streets that counter the prevalent culture of consumption, and one can find visible signs of spontaneity, diversity and difference. These streets display the many facets of public space: they are open territories of numerous types of exchange — social (passive, fleeting and enduring) economic, and political; they are places where negotiation is an active means of dealing with difference; they are places where different outlooks and backgrounds are recognized; and through all this they provide a space of belonging to many. By supporting a genuine social life these streets serve many roles: a pedestrian sanctuary, a place of social capital, support and community, a neighborly territory, a place for play and learning, a place for survival, an outdoor open space, and a place of cultural memory and history.