One prerequisite for a healthy city neighborhood, writes Jane Jacobs, is the presence of public spaces and commerce where people can congregate on different schedules, and for multiple uses (ie a well-designed park or bustling sidewalk). In contrast, Wall Street is "miserable...its eating places and clothing shops are pitifully inadequate for the demands on them." 50 years later, Amazon's same-day delivery and Seamless' delivery for corporate accounts seemed to have solved those problems.
But is Wall Street a better neighborhood for it? Jacobs' lament of Wall Street is as apt now as then. Software is getting good at solving easy problems. One can only hope this makes the harder problems easier, too.