Half as many people will not support half as many enterprises In a given geographical territory, half as many people will not support half as many such enterprises spaced at twice the distance. When distance inconvenience sets in, the small, the various and the personal wither away. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities densitydistancegeographybusinesseconomics
highdensityandovercrowding They hated both equally, in any case, and coupled them like ham and eggs, so that to this day housers and planners pop out the phrase as if it were one word, “highdensityandovercrowding.” Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities densityurbanism
Sentences and words do not exist by themselves Sentences and words do not exist by themselves, but have natural, inevitable, unavoidable interactions with their surrounding spaces, words, and other sentences. Sentences are not independent of their spatial context, and interactions can create meanings and harms. Sentences survive content-indifferent and content-hostile spacings, but surviving is not thriving. Text space should not be owned and governed by generic productions grids, which make for convenient production but inconvenient meaning. Space can and should be content-responsive, actively contributing to meaning – forever practices in poetry, maps, math, computer code, comics, theater/movie scrips, posters. Subtle visual spacing differentiates and clarifies sentences, and meaning becomes more consequential, memorable, retrievable. Edward Tufte, Seeing With Fresh Eyes Concrete poetrygridless.design typography