Looking out onto the street in the early morning, she drinks in the muffled quiet of the city street. Ah, snow, she muses. I love riding to work in the snow!  Funny to say that, she knows. Years ago such a sentiment would have been unthinkable, especially coming from a dedicated cyclist.  The city laid out below her window is quiet and bright, the sun sparkling off the fresh whiteness. With the advent of clean cars, the snowdrifts now stay white for weeks not hours and that fresh clean quiet of new snow lasts.  Even the engines of the big rollers are muffled by the falling snow.  All vehicles are equipped with high traction tires, so they can navigate slowly over the packed snow.  The streets are rendered useful to other travelers as well, cross country skiers and, even the occasional sleigh, now use the streets along with the busses, taxis and the still popular private cars.

Leaving her apartment building in the morning, she stops around the corner at the café, for a quick latte. In the summer the café has a window on the street, a ride through for cyclists, but today it is too cold to drink outside so she wheels in and waits in the biker lane for service.  Fresh OJ is offered even in the dead of winter because of the local greenhouses. “Dead of Winter” no longer feels like such a season of deprivation. Early on, when the locavore movement started, people thought it meant no citrus in winter and only turnips for dinner. This morning, the cold bite in the air, contrasts with the steamy warmth of the café and the tart sweetness of the fresh juice. Ah, she thinks, the best of both.

Coffee downed, she heads out into the cold winter day, bundled in her riding gear, she remembers, thankfully, that all downtown offices now offer showers and lockers so she can change before her big meeting this morning.  The narrow snow covered swale along the wide sidewalk, delineates the bike lane and leads to the broader greenway about two blocks over, Tracing the same path as the storm water from yesterday’s snow melt, she is soon on the greenway’s broad bike path. Ever since the priority of cycling became a part of city policy, city crews have plowed the bike path almost as quickly as they clear the bus routes. The wide greenway allows for lots of snow storage and she marvels at the strange ride along the dry clear path lined with steep sides of snow and shaded over by the bare branches of the arching elms high above. Am I really in the city? she muses.  Certainly this is not the city she heard about from her mother, who described the harrowing rides in the old city fighting for the narrow strip of space left after dirty grey snow was piled up on the sides of city streets.

“>Crossing the highway overpass, she glances between the dry, vine-covered trellises to see the traffic, buses and light rail surging by in the canyon below, The snow laden bamboo is bent over in the median strip, and below the bridge the slight hum of the wind turbines can be heard as they capture the wind turbulence the traffic generates and turn it into electricity.  As she enters downtown, she slides up onto the elevated inner-city bike lane. This is her favorite part of the ride, as she zips over intersections without stopping and glides along outside the second story windows of offices. She waves at a friend as she passes their mini terrace on the elevated way.  Below pedestrians, sheltered under the arcade formed by the bikeway, are looking into the shop windows.  The elevated bike way is always the first path to be clear since it was built with pipes in the lightweight concrete deck that carry solar heated water. It makes the path clear and safe and by the time she arrives at the office, her bike has shed much of the snow and water it had accumulated. Still, I’ve been needing a tune up she thinks and chooses to slide down the ramp at the corner to street level.

The city’s best bike shop, Dutch Bike, is across from her building, and it has become the center for city cyclists. The cyclists were formed into a powerful political group years ago when the shop was first brought to downtown and they were instrumental in getting the segregated bike ways to be standard on city streets. Seems now like every street corner or plaza has the new bike racks and the green and purple bikes of Dutch bike are everywhere.  The shop sells every kind of bike gear at every level from the snob racers with their imported Japanese and swiss components, to recycled basic bikes.

“>The company pioneered the free bikes program that is now in evidence all over the city. Since fewer people ride in the winter and snow, the shop toda is filled with the basic bikes.  People donate their old bikes and the shop fixes them up and paints them a screaming green. These are loaner bikes and are set out around the city for anyone to borrow. Based on a system in effect on some college campuses decades ago, the Dutch Bike Co. refined it into two levels of loaner bikes. The green bikes are available to anyone who has registered with the company and pays a small sliding scale fee per month. Then when they see a bike they want to borrow, they text in and are given the combo to the lock.  The bikes are free but hanging on to the bike with the lock requires that you keep the bike in the system. If the bike you borrowed doesn’t show up locked again, the network knows and charges you for the bike. The purple bikes are the older and more beat up bikes and they are just out on the street for anyone to use. Notoriously hard to lock through some clever design feature, they circulate freely among the residents of the city.

Bike racks are everywhere it seems. Innovative designs utilize blank walls to provide hanging racks under cover, every major building’s lobby has a space for bikes out of the weather, and the transit stations have what seems like millions of bikes in their multistory bike garage.  These days it is the cyclists who feel like they are the “king of the road”.

In a few minutes she passes the steamy windows of the great block-long greenhouse built on top of the city market.  The warm moist air smells sweet and she warms at the idea of the peppers and fruits growing inside all winter long.  Must remember to pick up some fresh carrots on the way home she notes.  Two more crossings, high over the streets and she arrives at the office, and enters directly into the building at the upper floor, wheeling her bike to the bike locker in the lobby and heads for the showers.  Some mornings instead, she wheels down the ramp found at the building corner and stops at the newsstand on the way into the main entry.

At her desk, she is bathed in the low light of a winter morning.  Because she is working on building design she sits in front of a large bank of computer screens at a curving desk. She feels like a navigator in some old sci-fi movie.  Adjusting the blind at her window she allow in the light while reducing the glare on her screens. The daylight gently falls deep in the room bounced against the high white ceiling by reflective light shelves. As she works she looks up to notice the changing color of the light as the sky outside goes from bright blue to grey and back again. I hope it stays clear for my site visit she mutters to herself. She looks at the time and then turns off the message function on the side screen – no time for distractions right now – I’ll get the news later.  The explosion of instant message and news feed technologies had led to a complete clutter of what is still quaintly called the desktop of her computer system.  Only after more recent brain function science proved that people cannot process multiple feeds of information effectively and need focus to be fully creative, did the systems start to offer various modes for quieting the “noise” and helping people concentrate on given tasks.

“>She looks around the room and is amused by the variety of work styles she can see even among her small group. Jamie is always plugged into music while she works. George keeps his area absolutely neat and clean and only pulls up one drawing or view at a time.  Manuel has a quiet bubble in effect around his area, but the visual clutter is astounding, until he has a flash of inspiration and he pushes the clear button and then works on a totally new drawing surface.  The light and temperature is adjusted by each person. Some of her colleagues don’t even keep a single station, preferring to roam about the lounge areas with their personal computers.

“>Because of the site supervision appointment, lunch today is a hurried affair. Barely time to stop up to the cafeteria greenhouse on the roof to grab a salad and fruit juice and enjoy a deep breath of the moist warm air.  The café serves all the offices in the building and is a great place to connect with other designers, engineers and other professionals. She does note that the Christmas poinsettias are coming into bloom lending the café a brilliant red light. Soon she will buy some of the poinsettias for the dining room at home. The orange tree has fruit and the bright citrus smell perfumes the space.  Christmas has always meant poinsettias and oranges. When she was little, she would get an orange in her stocking from Santa and her mom had explained that it was a traditional treat from the days when oranges were a rare winter luxury. When she was a child, they were easy enough to get since they were flown in from Israel and Central America everyday. No one calculated the cost to the environment of sending fruit all the way around the world by plane and truck.  Now they are grown locally all year, in more limited numbers so the harvest is special once more and even better – she can smell their blossoms and watch them ripen in time for the holidays.

This afternoon, she regretfully will abandon the bike to travel to a more distant job site using one of the company car shares.

“>After lunch, she dashes next door to the garage to collect the shared electric car she uses for trips to the job site.  Outdoors for a moment she breathes in the bracing cold air, almost like the dip in the frozen lakes after a sauna, she thinks, savoring the contrast from the moist warm air of the greenhouse.  The wall of the garage has the look of a snowy shroud.  The branches of the vines that climb up the building are covered in snow creating a lacy glistening effect as the low sunlight attempts to crawl into the garage interior. At the center of the garage, oddly the daylight is brighter due to the use of light-pipes bring sunlight directly down from the roof. She find her car at the charging station, enjoying the fact that the fully electric cars always get the best spots.  She pulls it off the rack and it unfolds opening up enough space to fit two passengers and a small cargo. She places her small computer on the passenger seat and tells the car her destination. It twirls on its axis and begins to maneuver out of the tight garage.

As she pulls out onto the city streets, she marvels at the calm of the city in the snow.  I think I like the city best in winter, she thinks.

When the rain falls, the city breaks into a musical chatter, the drumming of the rain on the awnings, windows, solar panels, greenhouse roofs, but when it snows, everything is quiet. The precipitation falls noiselessly and as it blankets the ground wraps everything in a muffling blanket.  Traffic slows and those noises recede. Even the scraping of the old fashioned snow plows has been replaced with the quieter rollers that pack down the snow on the roads, leaving white roads that take days to darken since the vehicles are no longer spewing dirty carbon.  The golden sand that gives grit to the streets creates a “yellow brick road” look.  The transit system gears up and most people leave their personal vehicles at home in preference for the speedier and more reliable convenience of busses and rail.  Immediately the municipal work crews, the same folks who manage and harvest the parks in season, set about clearing and sanding down the sidewalks. The poisonous salt of the old days is no longer used. The continuous tree lawns that beautify the streetscape and provide drainage in the rain also leave space to stack the snow when necessary.

Just as the mountain snow packs are essential for replenishing the water supply of the region, snow in the city has come to be understood as a resource not a bane. Two feet of snow sits stilly on the green roofs of the tall buildings, providing another blanket of insulation for the interiors.  As it melts and drains, the overflow is caught and stored in cisterns to be used in the drier seasons.  The buildings with pitched roofs and large sloping solar arrays shed their snow load down onto the “rain gardens” at the base of the buildings.  From there, the snow pack melts into the retention system built for storm events.   At street level, packing the snow on the roadways, rather than plowing it into huge piles, keeps it in place to melt over time into the swales and complex drainage systems that handle rainstorms.  Streets, parking lots and highways are all designed to accept large areas of snow along their edges and in their planted medians.  During extreme snow periods, the outdoor landscape is transformed from open plazas and café areas into a series of distinct rooms and passageways through the banked snow piles.  The pale sunlight is magnified and directly to the streets and narrower pedestrian passageways by big solar mirrors, making the most of the winter sun.  With the reflective piles of white snow everywhere, sometime the winter afternoon seems to glow rather than to darken.

“>The newest solar technologies in this city have certainly disproved the old concerns that northern latitudes could not make good use of solar energy. Every roof top is adorned with some shiny solar application and the new innovations mean that every south facing façade is also making power or heating water. Solar panels for hot water are integrated into the balcony railings of the residential buildings and the solar films on the commercial office towers turn the windows into power sources, out in the band of single and two family housing, the roofs look like conventional metal or shingle roofs, but all are generating power for the households.  Every large flat rooftop is full of panels that rotate to catch the best angles of the sun, looking at times like they have spikey haircuts twisting toward the sun.

Moving down the street it is impossible to lose one’s orientation. The large windows and solar panels brighten the south facing building facades, the panels track the lower angles of the sun and keep generating power all season long.  Like photo-tropic flowers they seem to lean out to catch the last afternoon rays and to soak them up and amplify them, bouncing light down into the streets below.  How fun, she thinks, that the building walls so eloquently express our winter yearnings for the sun.  In the heat of the summer they will instead act like shutters shielding the interiors from the direct rays and keeping everyone cool inside.   The buildings that face north are characterized by tall, well-insulated windows to keep out the cold and catch the most reflected light from across the street.  In the winter, with their sashes closed, they play the straight man to the more animated and exuberant partners across the street.

Down the center of the wide avenue runs the dedicated bus lane. Because the population relies heavily on public transport, the transit system is designed to remain functional even in heavy snow. The bus lanes are plowed first and kept clear, by the plows and rollers that fit directly onto the vehicles themselves. Circulating ground water elements keep the tracks warmed and keep the trains running in all weather.  The many covered sidewalks and bus stops keep the pedestrians out in all weather.

Generally in a big snow, a spirit of adventure comes over the city with cafes offering discount hot chocolates to shoppers and dinner specials for anyone working late.  A few snow days are planned for in the school calendar, more for the celebration than because it is too difficult to get to school. The school yards are filled with snow forts and ice skating and sledding where the hills or drifts provide the space.

The yearly winter festival is tied to the first big snow, with planned and spontaneous celebrations, performances and contests filling the plazas and parks of the city. A cross-country ski race takes place in the greenway, skating demonstrations and hockey games occur on the lakes and in the larger fountains.  Retail shops compete for the best snow and ice sculpture awards.  Two of the favorite celebrations of the year happen in the winter and snow is always welcome for these events: The Christmas holiday retains it focus on gift giving, although the excesses of the late 20^th century have been replaced by a tradition of more modest exchanges, with a focus on children giving presents to their elders in appreciation of all they do for them.  The shopping season is festive though, with specially lighted streets and lots of evening events in the streets downtown, Cafes stay open and serve cider and hot chocolate, and caroling has become a huge tradition with different choruses and singing groups signing up for certain spots for free evening concerts. It is reminiscent of college campuses with their arch sings, around every corner there is a song breaking through the crisp cold night air.

The extensive network of greenways through the city are transformed in the winter into a kind of wonderland, with high walls of plowed snow, long trails packed down for cross country skiers and cleared paths that allow the cyclists to continue to maneuver through the city.  Along the way are fountains frozen into skating ponds, sledding areas, and forts kids have carved from the drifts.  All under the tall canopy of the arching elm branches.

As she leaves the edge of the downtown and crosses the agricultural fields of the green belt farms, she shifts the car into manual drive. The car knows where to take her, senses the location of the other cars on the road anticipates traffic signals and is alert to pedestrians activity, so she could simply sit back for the ride, but she enjoys driving and reasserts her right to control her speed and choose her pathway.  The GPS will keep her form getting lost and let her know exactly how much time the detours are costing her but she likes to vary the route and see some of the suburban areas along the way.

She is traveling to a school building her firm is renovating.  They are upgrading the efficiency features and reorganizing some of the spaces to reflect new attitudes toward teaching kids in the ages from 9-12.

“>For years now, they have grouped kids by interest level in small collections of 5 and 6 kids with different groupings associated with different projects and learning pathways. The kids are closely mentored by the teachers, and by ‘real world” experts in the fields they are studying, but they do all their own research mixing online resources and hands on projects.  The concept of matching up these shifting groups was initiated when the algorithms for addressing learning style, age interests and academic levels could be fed into complicated schedule and subject requirements. Now the kids look forward to middle school as a moment when they move into increasingly varied and complex social groupings and challenging, self-directed problem-solving.

This approach is reflected in the architectural design and her job today is to review the effectiveness of new acoustic materials that let the groups work in alcove like settings without disturbing adjacent groups.  As she enters the building from the small parking lot, she smiles at the immediate contradictory impression the place creates of order and ebullience at the same time. Several small groups are using the sun-filled entry atrium as a kind of workshop – one group of 6 girls who look to be about 11 years old, are giggling as they test a model boat they are constructing for an engineering challenge.  A wide pond sits below the skylights and, as the architect knows, acts to control the climate and reflect light in the interior of the building. But for the girls, the lily pond, surrounded by ferns and home to fish and some frogs is just a natural part of their school environment.

A group of similarly aged boys are working on a mathematical puzzle on the carpeted wide platform stairs peering together at a laptop screen where their calculations are playing out.  Another group of mixed ages and genders is harvesting the swamp grasses at the edge of the pond for a science experiment. From where she stands near the bottom step she can see six different project teams working industriously, with sprinkles of hilarity, it like a beehive she thinks – chaotic at the first glance but somehow all proceeding with an internal order. There are adults throughout, some working closely with a team, others floating to offer advice as needed.  The buzz of activity is not loud or disruptive so the acoustic design appears to be a big success, and the alcoves allow the kids to focus on each other and their topic without leaving the big bustling space.  The proper classrooms are used for group discussions and usually have a large table to sit around, sometimes those classes are at lunch time modeling a family dinner conversation on a single topic.

She moves down the hall to meet with the buildings systems manager. He has brought in a group of older kids to participate in the meeting, having recognized the learning opportunity to meet the architect and discuss how their building functions to create and consume energy.  The kids report on the data they have been collecting and collating from the sensors around the school.  The west side room are staying warm in the evenings which is good for the adult classes reports their designated spokesman, but the food service staff is having trouble keeping their greenhouse warm enough. We wondered if adjusting the solar mirrors would increase the heat they get? The discussion goes on for 45 minutes and she has to admit hey have some impressive suggestions. She promises to send a recommendation to the manger and come back next week to check on the results.

The visit has been a welcome break form the office but it did mean missing tea. That is her favorite time of day in the office, when the changing light of the afternoon prompts the interior lights to come on, slowly acknowledging the diurnal rhythm of the day. Ever since the company went back to its owner’s English roots and brought back afternoon tea at that hour, she has enjoyed rather than dreaded the late afternoon. Such a sensible custom, to acknowledge that the body’s rhythms hit a slow time in the afternoon and need a little warmth, calorie infusion and a social break. Teatime has become the unofficial meeting time, when everyone leaves their desks and computer screens for a bit of “face time” catching up on each other’s projects and news.  She has sometimes thought watching the office “wake-up” to the changing light that the building and its occupants have a kind of choreographic relationship, the brise-soleil/light shelves twist to track the low winter sun, the lights begin to turn on, the staff seems to stretch in unison and slowly people get up and move around to collect around the tea cart with its hot brew and tantalizing collection of pastries from the bakery downstairs.  In the summer when the light lasts long into the evening, the open windows bring up the smell of the afternoon baking and that triggers the migration towards the tea table.

When I get back I’ll call Jakob and see if he can go out for dinner tonight she vows to console herself for missing Tea.

Restaurants thrive in the new city for every appetite, cultural preference and budget.   Because of the higher density of housing and the diverse population, the city can support a great variety of establishments.  Most have relationships with local growers to supply them and people are happy to pay local businesses for the added value of prepared food.   The guaranteed markets and range of greenhouses allow growers to experiment with specialty produce so the system encourages diversity and experimentation keeping up the population’s interest in food and eating out.  The variety of restaurants means the streets are active late into the evening, which in turn makes the neighborhoods safer and more desirable as places to live.

Back up in the office after dinner to collect some belongings and to get the bike to take it home on the bus, she and Jakob lean out from the third floor window, and look down onto the glistening sidewalk to watch the theatre-goers in their fancy clothes stepping off the curb into taxis and wandering down the avenue to the late night cafes.  The patrons pour out of the theatre into streets brightly lit with LED. The sidewalks glisten from the melting snow in the lights, high above the pedestrian zone the sky quickly darkens, allowing the stars to shine.

The pedestrians seem to be illuminated by magic, as if they were now on stage because the streetlights beam down on them like stage-lights focus on the actors.  No light spills up to glare in the upper story windows. The animated voices drift up to the open window.  Turning her gaze up to the night sky, she thinks the starry sky is a mirror for the sparkling theatre marquee below.   In the distance, the interesting shapes of the skyline towers are illuminated against the dark night sky. Each building has to petition the city for the right to use even the high efficiency lighting and the city awards rotating rights based on design merit.  So the city residents are treated to a changing skyline and a theatrical anticipation each month as to what the city will look like.  Lighting efficiency has boomed since the competition for wattage was set up, with new designs and strategies for creating memorable images while not wasting energy.

Looking back to the street, she follows the ballet of late night stragglers as movement detectors light up their paths across the streets and into the small parking lot by the theater.  How silly that in the old days the lot would be lit all night long when no one was anywhere near it.  With all areas of the city home to residents, the safety issue has long been addressed by new lighting and alarm techniques and even more by the oversight that residents maintain by looking out their windows.  The problematic noises of the city have been reduced by improvements in the design of engines and equipment. Now the noise out the window is the chatter of pedestrians in the evening and soon the early spring birds in the morning. No longer hermetically sealed into their apartments and offices people have a better sense of what is happening on the street outside.  Stargazing has come back as a pastime and many of the taller buildings in the city are outfitted with telescopes for amateur astronomy clubs.

She turns to Jakob, shall I ride home or grab the bus with you, she asks.  He checks his phone for the schedule. The bus will be here in five minutes, let’s catch it, he suggests. They grab her bike and head down to the corner stop. When the bus arrives, just on time, they load her bike quickly onto the rack at the back with a few others and settle in gratefully for the comfortable ride home. What a rich day it’s been, she thinks, looking out the window at the snow starting up again.