From Amber:
The Good City

When I was walking to a test early yesterday morning, I realized how peaceful it was outside at that hour- the way the light fell through the leaves, how quiet everything was, the lazy way everything, even the traffic, seemed to move, and the smell of damp grass and wet earth from the sprinklers. It was all so calm and lovely. It made me think about how much I love this city. I know with my constant weekend excursions to Indiana it may seem like I can’t wait to get out of here, but I really do love Chicago. After reading Jeff’s post from awhile back about what constitutes a good city, I started thinking about my own personal reasons for finding Chicago “good”. While I appreciate things like clean water, adequate, and garbage disposal, those aren’t the things that bring me to define this city as good. What it is, what it’s always been for me, has been the diversity of the city. Everything about this city is diverse- our people, our architecture, our wildlife, our hinterlands, our neighborhoods. And that’s the way it is in the natural world as well. You categorize the healthiest, best, most desirable landscapes as “good” when the have a large, extremely diverse native biomass. I’ve been to other cities, Philadelphia, New York (just in passing through), Dover, Cincinnati, and they all left me feeling fairly cold. Of course, I may just be partial to the city I grew up so close to, but Chicago really does have a different feeling than those other places. It just feels more diverse to me, it feels more natural. And I think we’re a city that doesn’t forget the wild. We’ve done a good job on incorporating green life and wildlife into our urban world. It just seems to me that everywhere I’ve gone has had the same building (same heights, same materials) crowded over and over into a barren space lined with concrete and asphalt and steel. Chicago almost reminds me of a climax community. There are so many “species”, species of plants, animals, buildings, people, landmarks, neighborhoods. Our city really does feel alive. I think that’s why this place always felt so good to me, I liked living in a city that lives and breathes and grows. It’s not static, just as a climax community is not static. It’s good.