PhillyMatters
Saturday, December 12th, 2009 | Essay, Planning | No Comments
This post is not just about Philadelphia, but it is a little sentimental. This post is really about place, and what makes a place. I’ve recently returned home to Philadelphia to visit my family and celebrate my mother’s birthday, giving rise to a number of thoughts on what makes a place.
I realized immediately that I wanted to put my thoughts into words when I walked up to the gate at DIA and saw the word “Philadelphia”. Just the word gives me comfort; I like the way it’s spelled, the way it sounds, and all the memories it conjures. This is when I realized that place is more than a location. Place is all the experiences, smells, tastes, sights, and sounds. Place is love lost and love found, lessons learned, laughter and tears. Place is a movie and blanket on a cold day in your downtown apartment; place is a kiss on Walnut Street; place is children’s laughter on an early fall day in Rittenhouse Square.
I will carry with me forever the taste of a real Philly Cheesesteak, memories of disinterested customer service, the way people say “Fuladelfia,” the rabid sports fans (more rabid than most places on this planet, save soccer fans in Europe), and the hot, humid days of summer that make you want to shower three times a day.
Philadelphia, whether on the periphery or in the center, was part of my life for 24 years. Arguably, it still is part of my life. As I’ve realized, you can take the boy out of Philly, but you can’t take the Philly out of the boy. My new home, Denver, is not any less important, just newer. After a week of travel for work, coming back to Denver is comfort. The skyline and mountains are imagery that will be imprinted with me whenever I decide to take the next journey. And the friends I’ve found there have built new memories that will make this place yet another so hard to leave but exciting to return.
Planners often boil place down to the basics, forgetting the intangibles that make a place. It is a tough balance though. Tearing down grandma’s house may open up the building of new memories for 100 new people, but tearing down a memory is an awful struggle we see play out over and over at planning meetings and in courts all the time. Planners look at streets, setbacks, uses, and transit. These are all possibly dry topics, but a good planner connects these to the very real interactions we have in a place. Planning is about building the infrastructure of memories and experience. It is an exciting prospect, but one that planners miss in the process of planning.