Cities in different climates are starting to resemble each other in unexpected ways.
A New York Times magazine
story talks about the increasing similarities between Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Baltimore: “Scientists think that cities are starting to look alike in ways that have nothing to do with the proliferation of Starbucks, WalMart, or T.G.I Fridays,” the story states.
Landscaping plays a major role in this. It’s about “the choices we make every spring when we emerge from our apartments and homes and descend on local garden centers.”
While Phoenix has more lakes today than it did in the past, Minneapolis, known for its lakes, “is becoming drier as developers fill in wetlands,” it states.
Cities are “becoming more like one another ecologically than they are like the wild environments around them.”
This, says the piece, is hopeful in that it indicates that “a sprawling metropolis built in a desert might actually offer a path toward something like sustainability.”