I’ve been thinking a lot recently about “eyes on the street”, Jane Jacob’s sociological concept of our connected urban fabric that keeps us safe and secure. A safe and secure city street, she theorized, is one with many people walking about, with many shops and mixed-use development, and many people in street-facing apartments, literally keeping their eyes on the street like an informal neighborhood watch.

The theory is that crime is most likely to happen on deserted streets, where there is no hustle and bustle, where no one lives nearby or shops nearby (think of a commercial urban core that dies at night) and so these quiet streets with no one on them are “ideally suited for rape, muggings, beatings, hold-ups and the like.” Eyes on the street keep us safe. Removing eyes off the street, whether through making streets unfriendly to pedestrians (or even taking away sidewalks) or zoning commercial and residential to be in different areas, makes us unsafe.

I’ve come to realize that I’ve internalized this view. Not only do I feel most safe amongst people (strangers), I feel terribly unsafe alone.

I grew up in an inner urban suburb on the border of West Philadelphia. There were always people around – screen doors faced out onto stamp-sized front lawns, people kept their curtains open. Packs of kids just roamed from one lawn to the next, regardless of whether the people inside had kids or even wanted kids on their lawn. We all walked to school together, surrounded by other kids and parents. We were never alone. The only time you didn’t have people watching you, was when you were in your bedroom, and even then, a well-known neighbor was on the other side of the wall.

This has grown into my idea of safety. When our neighbor in the row home next door had a pipe burst, flooding her living room, we were the first ones there. My dad turned off the water and tried to salvage what he could, while my mom comforted the devastated owner. When fights between neighbors got too loud in the middle of the night, you would see a neighborhood pour out onto front porches and turn on lights, to monitor and call the cops. We had a few car accidents on our street too, and each time, dozens of people would instantly gather around to help and call 911, no matter the time of day.

It is funny, because I don’t think a lot of people share this idea of security, and certainly not within a city. Our trip up to Humboldt County came with a lot of conversations with people about how unsafe cities are. Not just San Francisco, but the structure of a city itself – all the people, packed in, absolutely stuck if something catastrophic were to happen.

Of course, I’m not looking towards catastrophes but crime or medical emergencies or property damage, which is a much more likely scenario.

Nowadays, my jogging route could either take me through a densely forested park or along a busy 4-lane street. I regularly choose the street over the (maybe idyllic) forested route, purely because I think running in forests –alone, unwatched– is unsafe.

I regularly feel comforted that there are at least 10 other people living in my building, all of whom would jump to help out if we needed it — and who would likely hear us through the walls before we even needed to ask for help. When I went into labor in the middle of the night, the apartment next door heard the commotion and figured out what was happening; they stayed up the rest of the night in excitement and we came home to a bottle of champagne and baby book.

And outside our building, there are literally hundreds of people that live within a block of us, schools we could turn to, business owners that know Bean and how old she is and who her parents are.

This is the neighborhood I’ve seen jump to when danger and tragedy does strike. Last week, a 2-alarm fire broke out blocks away, and everyone — from the school, from homes, from business — ran outside at the sound of passing then slowing fire trucks. Down the street, I could see crowds of onlookers step into action and help fleeing victims safely cross the street away from the fire. We furiously texted about the location of the fire, with updates as to whether it was contained yet.

A few months ago, when someone started threateningly approaching a mother at a playground, she walked over to me and Dave and told us what happened. I still have no idea what her name is, but we jumped into action — we told her to take Bean and her daughter and leave, then I retrieved her stroller and bag while Dave called the cops.

As I write, the new puppy downstairs started making weird screechy noises and grunts. Unasked, a different neighbor just texted to let me know she’d looked into the window and the puppy was ok. I’ve also peered into windows to make sure dogs and cats are ok. We all share the same fire escape; it’s part of our job to snoop.

It is the instantaneous need to help each other, and watch out for each other, that draws me to living in a city. It is a communal effort, one in which we protect each other by our common plight and humanity.

People have asked us so many times whether we plan on staying in San Francisco as Bean gets older, kind of suggesting this is an impractical lifestyle. But, to me, these are the exact values I want her to grow up in and embody. You are part of a community. We watch out for each other. We help each other. This is how life works.