The day of the empty lot, of the city block unencumbered by parked cars, of the stoop, is over. In the cities there is virtually no empty space and what there is of it is given over to asphalt-paved parking lots and to public parks with carefully delineated fields and playing areas. The automobiles, the delivery trucks, the buses and the taxis pack the streets. What had been empty space is now divided into lots each with its tract house and its lawn. Unbuilt-upon land has been turned into ball fields where organized teams play, into golf courses and tennis courts and fenced-in paddle ball and handball courts. Stoops have been reduced to one step up.

One might expect that with this constriction of open space games peculiar to the streets of such urban centers as New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, games whose forms, rules and rhymes are part of America's urban tradition, would become constricted as well, would perhaps die of disuse. But this has not happened.