By Marco Shalma

Here’s the thing nobody in the “experience economy” wants to admit. Most of what gets built in New York right now looks great on a deck and dies the minute real people show up. It’s too curated, too controlled, too much “content opportunity,” not enough actual life. And listening to Klinenberg on that DOT podcast hit a nerve, because he’s talking about something the city used to be brilliant at: designing places where strangers collide and something interesting happens.

He’s not talking about food halls or dining rooms with pretty sponsors. He’s talking about sidewalks, plazas, and blocks reclaimed by locals because the city finally gave them space to breathe. That story about 34th Avenue? That’s not urban planning — that’s a neighborhood reminding the city what community looks like. And it works because it’s messy, constant, shared. It’s people showing up for each other because the environment makes it easy.

So here’s the question: if you’re building something in this city, a festival, a pop-up, a destination, whatever you want to call it, are you adding to that ecosystem, or are you building another controlled-environment vending machine? Are you designing for connection or for Instagram?

For New York Eats Here, this is the line in the sand. If the space doesn’t pull people out of their bubble, if it doesn’t invite the neighborhood in, if it doesn’t feel like a place you return to because it gives you something human, then it’s not worth building. The city doesn’t need another pretty backdrop. It needs places that function the way Klinenberg describes: real, consistent, shared. Places that make the neighborhood stronger than it was yesterday.

If you want the city to show up, give them a place where people don’t perform; give them a place where people participate. That’s the whole game.