WEEKLYPRESS.COM • UCREVIEW.COM • DECEMBER 5 • 2012 5 Whose Guest? Dissing Sterba continued from page 2


us that wildlife — in the United States and else- where — are in fact under- going a mass extinction. Annually, thousands of


entire species that flour- ished here for 65 million years are dying out within our brief generation. Why?


The sprawl of human activity — throughout land, air and sea — is eradicating the planetary homeland they evolved to inhabit.


Conversely, Sterba considers wildlife the invader, at least in U.S. neighborhoods.


This siege could be turned around, he figures, with some artillery fire. But “sentimental” types and “animal protection- ists” don’t want ammo flying down the sidewalk or a deer slaughter in the schoolyard. Their resistance only compounds the war, Sterba said — dividing humans into enemy camps of “Bambi saviors” vs. “suburban hero” hunters who could provide relief. Turf Wars


Sterba has a sharp eye for conflict. He, in fact, re- vives the old conquistador perception of life as a war between man and nature — handily transposing


Indeed, where’s “ours”? Drive through any sub- urban landscape and look for the living. You might see a feral


cat, a bored, incarcerated dog, a blue jay. Nobody else seems to live here. After we humans turn vertical, music-filled, na- tive habitat into flattened, life-shriven lawn, we ourselves go indoors and rarely inhabit that perfect, barren landscape. Few other creatures can inhabit it, either.


this battle re-enactment to suburbia, where ordinary Americans can engage. But engaging Ameri- cans may prove difficult. Few suburbanites even go outdoors today, except to climb in a car.


Our own species gener- ally lives well-fortressed behind walls, eyes watch-


ing digital screens, no more stirred by wildlife than the gases of Jupiter. Perhaps this explains why we are losing Sterba’s war. Wildlife invades “our habitat,” Sterba said, be- cause “ours is better than theirs.”


But where’s “theirs”? Credibility, SOSNA presentation continued from page 1


the plan to convert the for- mer YWCA into an apart- ment building in an infor- mational presentation. The plan’s two most


controversial aspects were its size – 33 units ranging in size from 500 to 1,200 square feet – and its height. Under the proposal, the gymnasium wing of the building would be demol- ished and replaced with a four-story extension of the three-story Catharine Street building, rising to five stories in a center sec- tion. The fifth story, Ohler said, would contain two penthouse apartments with recessed roof decks. Ohler pointed out that under the current zoning code rules, the developer of the property could build 33 units on the YWCA site by right; an amendment up for consideration by Phila- delphia City Council might


reduce that number to 31. But the height would still require a variance, and the immediate neighbors, in particular several residents who purchased new homes built on a formerly vacant lot to the site’s west, voiced their concern that the struc- ture would put their back yards in shadow for much of the day.


So did the owner of a


three-story townhouse on the east side of the 700 block of South 16th Street, who objected loudly and strenu- ously that the proposed five- story central section would put his roof deck in shadow and destroy the value of his property. One audience member commented on the resident’s combative tone, saying, “Looks like he came here to pick a fight.” Unfortunately, from the best evidence we can amass, the fight he picked was the wrong one.


The distance from the east wall of the YWCA to the west front of the 16th Street houses is some- where in the neighborhood of 100 feet. Now, we’re not engineers and our geometry is rusty, but it seems to us that a 15- to 20-foot-high addition to a three-story structure that’s not much taller than the existing houses would put a roof deck 100 feet away in shadow only as the sun was dipping below the horizon and putting everything else in shadow as well.


Ohler and the devel- oper told the residents that they would conduct more sunlight and shadow stud- ies and present them to SOSNA when the proposal is submitted for formal consideration at the Dec. 19 Zoning Committee meet- ing. We’re betting our ama- teur analysis of that 16th


Street neighbor’s objection turns out to be accurate. As for the immediate neighbors, the question be- comes one of competing in- terests: that of the residents who invested their money expecting certain things to happen based on existing codes and that of a devel- oper who wishes to make recycling a historic structure viable. We hope some suit- able compromise or accom- modation can be found, but as Ohler noted in the presentation, the proposed development might actually fill a hole in the neighbor- hood’s housing mix – and as the developer noted, “some- times you have to give something up” to achieve another desirable goal – like saving a piece of Southwest Center City history. Republished with permis-


sion from the Philadelphia Real Estate Blog.All Rights Reserved.


If a lawn is wonderful wildlife habitat, where are the plentiful songbirds, newts, turtles, eagles, porcupines, river otters, diverse butterflies and dragonflies once common to our continent? Where are the many voices of whippoorwills, owls, toads, frogs, wood- peckers, quail, warblers, pee-wees and wood- thrushes, common to East- ern states just 50 years ago? Habitat for Humanity A landscape of lawn and asphalt can’t support these native residents. This habitat can’t even sustain humans. That’s why we truck in life-sup- port supplies from thou- sands of miles away, as if indeed occupying some hostile enemy outpost. The word habitat con-


notes life.


And life, biologists tell us, is not a war. Life evolved, rather, by coop- eration — communities of myriad species that each benefited the whole. Microbe to treetop,


crawdad to hawk, wild- flower to rain cloud: This cooperative neighbor- hood is what allowed humans, also, to flourish at this address in the uni- verse. Today, Sterba accu- rately perceives, neigh- borhood balance is out- of-whack.


So if shooting some deer can restore balance, let’s fire away.


But if our aim is to tar- get the main problem, we should look down both ends of the barrel. We humans are the species that has sprawled across every habitat on the planet. Maybe things would go better, there- fore, if we acted like


planetary neighbors, not hoodlums. Efforts like National


Wildlife Federation’s na- tive habitat program offer guidelines to such civility, like ways to rehabilitate urban/suburban dead- zones back to life. I’ve done it — turned useless flat lawn into di- verse, canopied, fruiting, seed-filled, soil-rich, ver- tical woodland. It has not attracted deer.


It does house other beneficial, low-impact neighbors — owls, song- birds, turtles, toads, pol- linators — who don’t pol- lute, steal, roar gassy en- gines or shoot. They treat the place with respect. It is, after all, their


home.


Liza Field teaches English and philosophy in the Virginia Governor’s School and Wy- theville Community College. This column is distributed by Bay Journal News Service.


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