Placemaking initiatives to transform the public realm have the potential to (re)create and (re)shape environments to facilitate vital sociability among community members. These relationships span the spectrum of social ties, from strong to weak to invisible ties. While some of these ties fit into the imagined geography of a community, others do not. Understanding this inequity warrants attention in urban design if we are to create meaningful spaces and places that enable a sense of belonging to flourish. Accordingly, this chapter explores narrative as a qualitative methodology to study social ties formed, dissolved, or ignored in urban space. Narratives, we argue, tell the story of how and why different social ties occupy their social position and access different resources in the built environment. Ultimately, this chapter aims to demonstrate how narrative exposes different, and sometimes opposed, plots weaved into the experiences of urban space, thereby enabling researchers to tell a larger narrative of the underlying causes that bring people together (or apart).