Back home

And… exhale.

Back home, in the living room, in my comfy chair, watching the sunrise. It’s good to be back home – really. Five weeks, 12 beds, six planes, 1 boat, four bikes, and countless trains. Creating that balance between needing to see it all and having the space to digest it, and the coherence to enjoy it. We paced ourselves well for a trip of this length, but it’s still quite a push. It’s good to be home to recuperate.

An thus amazing adventure ends, and now the integration begins. I feel much wisdom percolating through my system – but it is still disorganized, scattered. As I tell the story of our trip, it will congeal. As I spend the next few weeks writing my report for my sponsor, it will take more shape. But it may take years to fully wrap my head around the experiences and lessons of this trip.

A few things are obvious off the bat. First, that Europe is full of amazing cities, where regular people live with an incredibly high quality of life. Yes, they may have less materially on average. But that material wealth comes at a cost – of course, environmental, but also the attachment we place on things that can distract us from life. I am as susceptible to this as anyone – it’s the natural inclination of the mind to want more and more. But, personally, I don’t want to be materially rich at the expense of being spiritually rich. Instead of chasing things, I want to live well now. And part of my own wellbeing is seeing that those around me are taken care of as well. Which we just don’t do well as a society here. We saw more homeless, hurting people on the two block walks from BART to our house than we did in all of Europe. We might have a higher average wealth, but our standard deviation is much greater as well. In Europe, there is a social contract that sets limitations on some people, but in turn creates an amazing support system which benefits the great majority – imagine excellent, free education for your kids without having to move to the suburbs, imagine never worrying about your health care coverage, imagine approaching retirement knowing you’re well taken care of. At all stage of life, there is provision, such that you need not live scared. Being scared serves the employers, the politicians, and those that exploit your fears to their end. Fuck them. They are holding us down from experiencing a truly richer life. And to what end – I wouldn’t say I’ve seen a lot of happy CEOs and politicians, either.

The next observation is that cities are getting better. After half a century of neglect and decline, the last 20 years have seen a reinvigoration of cities everywhere. I need to understand this more – my initial guess is it’s a return of the suburban kids to the cities. Whatever the reason, the same thing I’ve been witnessing in the US is occurring throughout Europe as well. Everyone I talked to was optimistic about their cities, investing in their cities, and happy with the quality-of-life changes that had been made in recent years. There’s just more good people doing more creative things. This manifests in the arts, the intersection of arts and commerce (i.e., restaurants, fashion), transportation (especially the bicycle movement that keeps growing), ecological awareness and innovation, and in how we design our cities at the ground level to serve people, rather than from the sky where the plans look pretty. Even during the difficult economic times of the last few years (and possibly moreso), improvements have been made. Let’s hope the tipping point has been reached, that the momentum keeps improving civilizations, and that cities can keep learning from each other (especially if that involves paid trips to understand what’s going on).

My final quick observation is that I work in a great profession. Every planner I met on this trip was savvy, smart, and heart-oriented in their work. There is a kinship across this field of good people doing good things. It made me proud and honored to be part of such a profession.

And with that, I return to work. Beyond the thousand emails waiting for me, I so look forward to integrating what I’ve learned into the wellbeing of San Francisco. It’s not clear to me how or where exactly it will happen – but in anything I’m involved in, the wisdom of this adventure will be there with me.

As such, this will likely be the last blog entry (until Abbie finds the time to post more pictures, and we may find a better venue for that). Thanks for coming along, I hope you enjoyed, and please send me any comments or feedback you have on what I’ve shared.

Love-
Steve

What We're Looking Forward To

It's been a glorious, glorious five weeks. But there are some things we've been missing. Here's a quick look at some of those things we're gonna enjoy for reals starting on Monday:

Steve: cereal
Abbie: our bed
Steve: playing drums
Abbie: cooking
Steve: having more time for my spiritual practices
Abbie: eating Mexican food
Steve: seeing my friends
Abbie: not having to watch Steve write a blog
Abbie: starting lots of art projects based on inspirations from this trip
Steve: dropping by drinking habit
Abbie: showing off all the fresh fashion I acquired in Europe
Steve: sleep
Steve: enjoying my new belly
Abbie: not having to pack up every couple of days

Copenhagen

It’s our last night in Copenhagen. We’re in the midst of the biggest thunderstorm they can remember. We just got soaked running back from the train station. Which is appropriate, as we’ve gotten soaked in every city thus far, but so far all I’d gotten here was a tan. We’re hoping it lets up enough to run out and eat some Italian food. Since that’s what we’ve had every night here (I mean, if your local cuisine is eh, why not just adopt the best in the world). Otherwise, room service herring it is.

Copenhagen is a delightful city. For some reason, I can’t just can’t get that pumped up about it right now. And when I say for some reason, I mean the reason is that since the last time I was here (2004) I’ve built this image of Copenhagen as a car-free, totality egalitarian, creative city populated only by supermodels (yes, I had a very nice trip here last time). But it’s only 90% true. It’s the funny thing about expectations – they take some place outrageously lovely and make it somehow a bit disappointing.

Yes, of course, everyone has free healthcare, free education through university, guaranteed housing, and a host of other amenities. Of course the train runs every two minutes, the bus every five, and every major street has separated bike lanes next to the sidewalk, away from the moving and the parked cars. Yes, of course Danes are exceedingly sweet, funny, beautiful, and hospitable. And the buildings are those beloved five-stories, colorful, and in the downtown, often ornate. OK, just writing this I’m talking myself back into the city. I gotta admit – we’ve been living so large this last month that I also take many beautiful things for granted, which is never a good idea, because you never know when such a glorious run will end. Or you do, because your plane leaves tomorrow.

This isn’t intended to be the trip recap piece, so let’s get back to Copenhagen. My take is that it’s a city with an uncertain future. Copenhagen is a relatively small city (500,000) in a relatively small region (1.5 million) in a damn small country (5 million). Denmark has not historically handled immigration well, and so it’s unclear how much demand for growth there will be – which is particularly relevant because the City has plans for some quite beautiful new neighborhoods that will not materialize as such there is demand. It’s also not clear what the city’s economic trajectory is – none of the planners seemed to have a firm grasp on it (compared to places like Lyon, where the economic strategists informed the planners). While I firmly believe an economy can thrive without steering, I’ve seen every city identifying how best to integrate with the global economy that I’m concerned that such a small outpost such as Copenhagen will get passed by without being more strategic.

And so I complete my last city report. Tomorrow to London, and Monday back to San Francisco. We’ll share more – Abbie has 2,096 pictures thus far. And we’ll see y’all soon.