Sometimes you just wonder as to how much noise is a tolerable amount before you decide to no longer tolerate what you have been tolerating. Sometimes you wonder, and you decide that you’re just gonna live underground… in the sky! Surely the views would be better, and perhaps the warmth, and less noise too.

I look outside a small gap and I see some plants and some traffic, and I wonder if the space could be greener. Realistically, the answer is yes, but it comes down to how much people would tolerate, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that people won’t tolerate much. Such is the way of things, I suppose.

The space outside, and a lot of the city could be much greener, I think. More plants, more trees, more growth. Help give a less cold and hostile feel to the state of things, but it is only one step. More greenways would be an improvement, I think. Some streets around could definitely use them. Help get more biota in various areas. Hopefully see some creatures that haven’t been seen in some areas for a long time.

But of course it takes time, and lobbying and fighting, and education and all those things, but I think it’s a good idea. I think it’s good to pursue if we can, and we can. I know the pathway that I currently can see does not need to be anywhere near as wide as it is. It could easily use more plants, and so could some of the other side of the road too. Make the area feel friendlier. That might ruin the hipness of the space, but it still would be nice.

Perhaps less hostile development in general would be a good idea. If you were building a building, then you’d have to have a number of endemic flora planted of certain types, and they’d have to be maintained too. That’d be a good idea, I think, but it’d have to be a meaningful amount; not just one or two plants here and there, and concreting everything around them so they’ve no room.  Actually give them the space to grow and develop, and if they spread they spread, and that’s awesome because you’d be creating more shade and helping to reduce urban heat island impacts, and don’t we want people to thrive?

There’s too much hostility toward having more greenery in general, I think, and a lot of what we see feels like it’s the bare minimum. We’ve only one planet to live on and it’d be nice to see it treated with better care, and there’s so much we can do and a lot of people do do. Adding more plants, especially ones endemic to the areas in which we live, is one small step, but it’s an important one. It’s something we can fight for and do more of, and so perhaps we should.

But I’m just hoping and dreaming at the moment. Nothing changes if we don’t work.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:59:86

Fast, and I think I might’ve dragged things out a bit much when I could’ve put in more.

Written at work.