Why NOT the urban life…

So long ago before I had any actual readers of this blog, I did a post extolling just a few of the many advantages of living in the city. In that post, I promised also to give some time to all the things that suck about the city at some point. Well, the moment is here at long last. While out catching cute pics of the little lady at the park yesterday, we also stopped to capture this gem for posterity:

That’s right. It’s a giant trash- and dirt- covered pile of leftover snow. Notice the garbage bags fore and aft that were left behind during last week’s trash pick-up. If you zoom in for a closeup, you’ll be able to see the pile of trash on the street next to the black bag (it’s not snow!), as well as the various small pieces of plastic debris decorating the snow pile like cake toppings.

And just to be clear, this is not from some back alley or parking lot–no, no. This is right on the side of the road, taking up a parking space on a well-trafficked, high-profile street in an affluent neighborhood. If you go a few blocks south to a less-affluent neighborhood, you’ll see the same piles, except the snow has melted completely and it’s just a giant stack of straight-up trash.

Living in the city is not pretty, people. In fact, it can be ugly. This goes doubly or triply for Philadelphia, whose citizens seem to take a certain amount of pride in perfecting the art of throwing their crap wherever they feel like it. Garbage can AND recycling bin on every corner? Whatever! I’m in the middle of the block–my trash is going on the ground NOW. I’m in my car? That trash is going out the WINDOW. It’s trash day (or even if it’s not)? I will put out sixteen untied Shop-Rite bags that will soon be blowing down the street like tumbleweeds, leaving a few more pieces of garbage behind them with every roll.

Yesterday my daughter and I were watching the birds in the tree from her 3rd floor bedroom window, and I had to explain to her that the white plastic bag that had made its way to one of the tallest branches was not, in fact, a rare albino breed of bird. (Well, the explanation was for my own amusement, since she does not yet technically understand much, if anything, of what I’m saying.)

So there you have it. The city (and this city in particular) can be an aesthetic nightmare, especially at the end of winter before anything is growing or blooming and neighborhoods have yet to launch any spring cleaning efforts. In fairness to Philly, though, while it doesn’t LOOK so nice most of the time, if you measure it by environmental standards that actually have an impact, it really is leading the pack and I’m quite proud to be living in a city that is making such amazing green strides so quickly and aggressively. Those trash cans I mentioned earlier? They’re solar-powered compactors. And apparently the water department has been quietly adding some absurd number of green roofs to the city per year through strict regulations for new buildings, which helps out the storm water management system immensely and keeps our water cleaner and safer–and now the mayor is launching a white roofs initiative to help save energy to boot. Woot!

It’s spring it’s spring it’s spring!!!

While in general I’m not trying to make this blog all about posting pictures of day to day goings-on, I’m so excited about our first spring trip to the park as a real live toddler who can toddle that I’ve got to just do it this one time. (I know it’s not ACTUALLY spring, but it was 60 degrees here today. Totally counts.)

We hit the little tot-lot section with a vengeance and although at first she wasn’t really sure what to do with herself, before long we were climbing up the stairs…

going through the tunnel…

standing at the top of the slide…

and going down!

(I couldn’t get an actual picture of her sliding, since I had to kind of spot her. Getting the pictures I did already earned me a number of judgy looks from the far more responsible moms at the park as the big camera clonked her in the back of the head once (didn’t even flinch, though–nothing gets through that ginormous skull), and as I let her nearly topple off the whole structure once or twice. Would have been a long, slow one-foot fall to a grisly end on the rubber-covered ground, I tell you.)

Anyway, life is better when a) it’s not winter and b) your kid can DO STUFF.

Why the urban life…

I figured it’s about time that I go into a bit of detail about why the urban life goes hand in hand with my “simple” and “green” themes. I will preface this by saying that I KNOW that not everyone will see the benefits I list in the same light I do and also that I AM NOT deliberately trying to cast aspersions on suburban living (though it may seem like it since the point of this post is to point out the advantages of the city–next I’ll do a post of the disadvantages, k?). There are many great things about both, and a person can be simple and green and happy in either place. I grew up in the suburbs and would say I pretty much had the perfect childhood. I just happen to love the city now–and love it so much that I have to share why!

1. I have nearly no outdoor maintenance. This is simple because, obviously, my husband and I just have to sweep a 10×8 ft. patio from time to time and try to remember to water the flower boxes out front. This is green because we do not have to use any water to keep a big lawn alive!

2. It costs almost nothing to heat/air condition our house. We live in a row home–which means the two long sides of our house are attached to the homes next to us–which means only the front, back, and flat roof are true outside walls. We get away with turning our heat and air on much later in the seasons than you’d expect, and even once they’re on, the bills just don’t skyrocket.

3. We only have one car. I was so happy the day we downsized to one! No more second insurance payment, no more buying gas, and no more taking it to the shop. Now I walk or take the bus/subway/train everywhere. Is it a little annoying from time to time that I can’t always get to a place as fast as I want or escape the elements when they catch me unawares? Yes, but I think the trade-off is worth it in saved money, saved carbon, and a whole lot of automatically built-in exercise for me to boot.

4. On the car note, I love the fact that I am forced to do virtually no baby-schlepping in and out of hot cars to run errands. I pop her in the stroller or Ergo and away we go by foot–no trying to keep her happy behind me while we’re sitting at endless stoplights, no finding parking and loading her in/out/in/out of different carts and strollers and carriers. And again, bonus that we’re not dumping lots of extra pollution in the air being in the car all afternoon. (And maybe a bonus to our general safety that we are in a car so infrequently–if you follow the news AT ALL it’s hard not to be convinced that you’re about to be mowed down at every moment by a crazed text-addicted 20-something! You doubt me?–See this vid at minute 2:15!)

5. The people-watching is amazing. This has nothing to do with the environment (unless you want to make an argument that too much homogeneity crushes the soul), but man, can you “simply” entertain a baby by parking her stroller at a good vantage point in a city square and just letting her watch the ridiculous variety of people passing by. The perfect “zone out” activity for that 6-7 pm hour before bed! (Which does remind me of another related advantage–that you can take about 10 quick walks per day in the city and have them all be to completely different genres of destinations even though you’re staying in the same 5 square block radius–really helps when you’re at that “I’m completely bored with my infant who can’t really do stuff yet but I don’t want to admit it to anyone lest they judge me” phase.) Of course, you can’t choose which types of people walk by, which can really be a burn sometimes.

All right, I know there are more, but that’s a good start for one night. And I will post a rant at some point about all the things that piss me off about the city. Because there are plenty of those, too. But actually I think I already covered the biggest one a minute ago.