If Manhattanhenge, discussed in my prior blog, broadcasts the relationship between Manhattan’s street grid and the sun’s seasonal path, summer’s heat pushes us to respond to the sun’s path with innate astronomical awareness in our daily lives. With summer in full blast, the sun’s heat radiates off sidewalks and buildings and intensifies the temperature. As a walker in Manhattan, whether for pleasure, errand running, or as part of my daily commute, I often assess what side of a street is better shaded, and choose that side for my walk. With the longer stretches of my walk extending in a north-south/south-north direction, this means walking on the east side of an avenue in the morning and the west side in the evening. The difference in temperature is significant. Winter brings the opposite effect: seeing out the sunnier side of the street for greater warmth and light. Orientation to the sun has figured in town and city planning for centuries, typically as a way to enhance warmth and light long before the development of modern heating and lighting systems. Notably, in 1916 New York City passes a zoning resolution to preserve sunlight at street level, recognizing sunlight as a public good. At the time, buildings were limited in height—and sun-blocking effects—by engineering capabilities. With continual improvements in elevators and the use of steel frame structures, building height have multiplied, impacting street-level sunlight. At the same time, urban landscape materials—asphalt, metal, and dark buildings—absorb more sunlight than forests, fields, and snow-covered terrain, resulting in an “urban heat island”, were a city’s temperature is significantly warmer than in surrounding areas. New York City’s heat island effect is most felt at night, when the temperature is 5 to 7 degrees warmer than in surrounding areas. Scientists and urban planners have considered how attention to the interplay of urban structures and sunlight can enhance energy conservation by cooling the city. NASA determined that dark, sunlight absorbing black roofs in New York City reached 170 degrees on July 22, 2011, a peak day in a heat wave that resulted in a city record for electricity usage. By contrast, white roofs were 42 degrees cooler. This led to the widespread installation of white roofs, with the aim of decreasing electricity usage and reducing city temperatures. While not as extreme as the impact of roof-top lightening, a shift from the sunny to the shaded side of a city street in the middle of Julycan offer a welcomed refuge. If you find yourself wandering down a city street during the heat of summer, think about how you intuitively position yourself for cooling comfort. We’re not so different from other animals in this way!
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The rain was falling lightly during my walk to work today. It cast a sheen on built surfaces, transforming sidewalks and streets from gritty and dull, light-absorbing flatness to illuminating mirrors. Puddling in the depressed edges of sidewalk squares and in random fissures and crannies, it highlighted the imperfections in the controlled straight-line geometry of our built environment. Rivulets of small steams ran curbside, the water braiding in patterns as it found its way down micro gradients that barely were perceptible when the surface was dry. Gently, the drops hit the ground with a light, feathery drumbeat. Falling on puddles, each drop created rings of concentric circles, with small waves expanding outward and intersecting neighboring circles in a dance of geometry as wondrous and revealing as my childhood Spirograph toy. Drops gathered at the tips of tree branches like little crystals reflecting light. As we know, each drop fell from the sky, part of "the water cycle" we learned about as children, a cycle that connects land, sky, and ocean and stretches back hundreds of million of years. Walking along the city canyon of buildings, my line of vision is limited. But I think about what this weather system looks like from overhead or at a distance. I think about how in wide open vistas one can observe the rain from afar looking like a dark column connecting deeper gray clouds in the sky and earth. Some Native American tribes have referred to these columns as tall women moving across the Plains. Rainfall in a field or forest is delightful, with water enhancing deep greenery and dripping off leaves. But rain in a city reminds us that nature and its cycles are always with us. It transforms urban micro plains and surfaces, enriching their colors and calling out asymmetries and forces of gravity and nature that even the most focused efforts of humankind to tame cannot overcome. Consider taking a walk on a rainy day. The fourth nor'easter of the 2017-2018 winter season has hit. During a "pocket adventure" of a snowy morning wander through Central Park, I was reminded of a piece I wrote some years ago about a pocket adventure during another snowstorm, which happened to coincide with an apt exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History and performance at the Metropolitan Opera, and nods to my hero Max from Where the Wild Things Are, also mentioned in my previous post: ------ December 26 brings urban snow storm bliss to this woman who grew up reading tales of explorers of faraway places: nighttime cross-country skiing up Lexington Avenue, then into Central Park, breaking trail around the Reservoir bridle path. Trees groan in the wind and lightening zaps the sky bright for a moment. The snow bears down hard and drifts. By the time I come full circle on the bridle path, my tracks are gone. After twenty-five years of living in the neighborhood and frequenting the park, I am used to the variability of this place, how it changes with the seasons and times of day. But, this evening, it is eerily transformed. All alone in this dark and wind-howling space, I am transported to deep winter in New England, or if I let my imagination go farther, to a place more remote: Antarctica. I am in the company of the ghosts of Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen, whose voyages to the South Pole are chronicled in the exhibit now at the American Museum of Natural History and who perhaps, by some supernatural force and dark sense of humor, brought on this storm to enhance the exhibit’s verisimilitude. If I listen hard enough through the wind, I can will myself into hearing the explorers’ sled dogs yelping, stirred to life and excited by the storm. I complete my evening adventure with a ski down East 79th Street and return to my apartment, feeling lucky to have shelter. The next morning I awaken early to ski in the park while the snow still is pristine. Plows have been through overnight, clearing Central Park Drive and east-west pathways. But for this touch of civilization and the efforts of many now sleep-deprived snow clearing teams, all is quiet, still, and disguised by heaping drifts of snow. I am once again transported to a faraway place, like Max in Where the Wild Things Are, when his bedroom transforms into a jungle. Lost in the rhythm of skiing and day dreaming about being a part of Amundsen’s courageous team, I barely notice the stranger trudging by ski-less. As I glide past, he says, “I once skied to the opera!” I am stirred out of my snow-induced trance enough to reply, “I’m going tonight. La Fanciulla.” I smile inwardly at the appropriateness of this of all operas, with its snow scene and gun-slinging, frontier-woman heroine not dying of consumption, a rugged character perfect for the rugged weather. My response evidently strikes a chord. The stranger senses an opening and asserts, “What’s with the over the top Magic Flute? Too much for an opera buffa! What do they think it is, The Lion King?” He continues, “And that Anna Netrebko, she’s such a ham. I mean that Lucia, singing with her neck hanging off the stage! What next, singing standing on her head, just because she can?” With Scott and Amundsen in slow fadeout, I realize it’s not a moment to debate the virtues of spectacle for bringing in broader audiences. I agree with the stranger, noncommittally. It’s time to ski along. As I glide away, I think about how I love New York, still itself even when costumed in two feet of snow. I arrive home, and although it’s breakfast time, I have some hot soup, like Max. |
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Hi! I'm Nancy Kopans, founder of Urban Edge Forest Therapy. Join me on an adventure to discover creative ways to connect with nature in your daily life, ways that are inspired by urban surroundings that can reveal unexpected beauty, with the potential to ignite a sense of wonder. Archives
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