Sometimes, the mindset of planning can cause us to lose track of something that makes the field so compelling: the social fabric that neighborhoods express. Here’s a story that brings the American cityscape back to earth. It’s about an amateur photographer– a young policeman– whose work over the last decade captured the grit and beauty of ordinary time in some of New York City’s least glamorous precincts. To some extent, a few of his images remind me of my own memories of doing Census field work in Jersey City, when I was 19.