I've lived all my life in the suburbs, and I liked it that way. Recently I've discovered my urban identity.
Growing up in Hawaii, on the island of Oahu, my family lived on the windward side, and every day we had to take the highway which passed through tropical jungle and tunneled through lush, green mountains. It was gorgeous. But also a pain in the rear. Going to school or work was an hour-long slog in stop-and-go traffic, and same thing on the way home. At least the scenery was good, the air fresh and the sky blue. I didn't like the feeling of being in Honolulu, in the "big city. " The buildings blocked the sunlight and I was not used to the noise of traffic or having strangers everywhere in close proximity. I liked my peaceful neighborhood with streams to play in, fruit trees, and flowers, but I did not like being isolated from my school friends.
The Stanford campus felt comfortable, with it's low-rise buildings and vast green spaces. The buildings are spread rather far apart, so a bicycle is an absolute necessity, and the feeling of wheeling around with the wind in my hair was liberating. While in college I visited Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and did an internship in Washington D.C. I enjoyed the excitement of these cities-- the restaurants, the cultural life, the metro and the architecture, but they were just short sojourns. I have never had the desire to live in foggy San Francisco, with its parking nightmares and homeless people. I didn't like walking on streets which reeked of urine and I couldn't imagine raising children in an urban environment.
Mark and I settled in an idyllic cul-de-sac in Palo Alto, about 35 miles south of San Francisco on the sunny Peninsula. It is a small but cosmopolitan wealthy bedroom community. It's clean, quiet, and beautiful. I loved my garden full of fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers. I loved our single-family-home and walking or biking to school with the kids. I tried to get to know the neighbors and organized annual block parties, but frankly everyone was so busy with work and families that we rarely got to know our neighbors on a deeper level. Yet it was friendly, safe, and comfortable. The only bad part was driving during rush hour on the highway or on a major thoroughfare. We NEVER drove up to San Francisco on a Friday or Saturday night because it could take an hour and a half and it was enough to make you downright crazy.
Then a year ago we moved here to Barcelona. It is the second-largest city in Spain and the capital of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia. It's a cosmopolitan city with unique architecture and the sixth most populous urban area in the European Union. In fact the population density in our current neighborhood is 30 times denser than in Palo Alto!! We sought to have a different experience, a life without cars, in the heart of a metropolis, and boy did we get it. There are no single-family homes here. Everyone lives in an apartment. If you're lucky, you've got a terrace, or maybe a balcony. We could have chosen to live in the hills on the outskirts in an apartment with a pool and maybe a little yard, but we chose to try something different. There are lots of small plazas where kids can play, but they are generally paved and grassless. What I miss most is the color green, and wide-open spaces.
In our neighborhood the buildings are about five stories high and faced in stone, which over the last hundred years has weathered to gray. The strikingly ornate modernist architecture is captivating and often whimsical, and the streets are rather wide, yet the buildings cut the sky into rectangles above me. At least the sky is clear and often blue, else I'd probably get depressed, especially in the winter. The buildings are designed with light-wells and we have a good amount of natural light on both ends of the narrow box we call home. Luckily we also have excellent doors and windows which block out the noise from the street. We live on a street full of sidewalk cafes, which are open until after midnight every night. It is also a bike lane and allows only minimal car traffic. Two or three times a year we are awakened by people shouting in the street, but really not often. The street can be dirty, with all the cigarette butts and dogs relieving themselves hither and thither, but cleaning crews sweep and spray the place down daily, and shopkeepers often mop and sweep their little patch of sidewalk. Traffic is actually rather minimal, honking nearly non-existent, and the cars drive much more cautiously than I am accustomed to.
I had this image of all cities as loud, dirty, unsafe, crowded, impersonal places. As it turns out, this is not necessarily true. The air here is surprisingly fresh. I feel safe walking around at night.
Yes, there are a lot of pickpockets, and I have heard of rampant purse-snatching in the narrow alleys on the other side of town. Yes, there are a lot more smokers here, and they are forced to stand on the sidewalk or on their balconies because thankfully restaurants and nightclubs are supposed to be smoke-free. Yes, walking on the sidewalk can be an obstacle course. Old person on the right moving slowly. Two people stopped in front of store talking, blocking the sidewalk. Person texting while walking, oblivious. Yet I also see the advantages of city life. For one, people here are in decent shape, probably because they walk a lot.
For the first three months here, my feet ACHED every day from the walking. I quickly converted to flat shoes. Now walking 25 minutes somewhere is not at all daunting. There is a bike service called BICING which for $60 a year you can borrow a bicycle from any station in the city and return it to any station within two hours. I use it every weekday to go to and from school. The bus and metro are comfortable and efficient. What I think is excellent about having everyone use public transportation is the way it equalizes people. It gets the older people out moving around, encountering younger people. It forces a minimal amount of social integration and interaction. When we are all isolated in our car bubbles, we don't talk to or really look at other people around us. I don't think I EVER rode the bus in Palo Alto. I loved this TED talk by Jeff Speck called The Walkable City and I have to say I'm changing my mind about city living.
There are small businesses on every corner. Now that we know our neighborhood, it is quite convenient to have the bank just downstairs, the bakery on the corner, the drug store around the corner, and the grocery store one block away. Our dentist is three blocks up. I am getting to know the bank teller. I practice my Mandarin with the owner of the bazaar and his wife. Even at the vegetable market, over time you build a relationship with the person you buy carrots from every week. I actually didn't feel these kinds of relationships in California, even though I regularly shopped at the same Safeway or Trader Joe's every week. Although the city of Barcelona is bigger, it's corners are smaller. And though Palo Alto is small, it's businesses are less personal.
The other day we were walking around and I realized what a huge change it will be to go back to sleepy Palo Alto, after having had all of this excitement literally at our doorstep. I wonder when it's all over and we are back in Palo Alto whether I will breathe a sigh of relief, or end up feeling bored and isolated.
