Street smart

The city is now where most of us live. WORLD profiles 10 unique urban centers, the people who make them thrive, and those whose life calling is to make them better | Mindy Belz

Somewhere between the garden that was Eden and the new Jerusalem is the street where you live. The one I knew first was Twelfth Avenue, a lane marked by curb and gutter in a neat 1950s neighborhood of low rooflines and wide, short driveways. But it was close to main thoroughfares, and on a clear day my mom and I could walk to collect my brother from school and we knew the name of every neighbor and merchant we might pass along the way.

Then came Brantley Road, a tar-and-gravel road in an ever-expanding "subdivision." To be legitimate we had to plant a regulation mailbox on a post at the street and take the bus to school. The road to anywhere from there wound through pine woods, crossed rail tracks and a river before hitting the first stoplight that meant "town."