Life in the Slow Lane

by Bruce Schimmel

Just as the prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully, the reality of $8-a-gallon gas has fired the afterburners of Italy's quest to be self-sufficient.

To save energy, Italians are doing things that would blow our circuits. They drive teeny-weeny cars, they eat what's local, and they recycle everything — including their food and their buildings.

Sustainability is our name for this. But since 1986, Italians have been racing toward an ecological future through a Philosophy of Slow.

Let me show you the way to Slow with tomatoes.

Italian tomatoes come in every hue — from plum to red to orange and yellow. And in every shape and size — from goofy, big slicers to tiny cherries. Most dazzle best when simply sliced and laid atop mozzarella, with bread and olive oil nearby.

Many of Italy's tomatoes are heirlooms — unhybridized throwbacks to a time before the easy-to-ship varieties you see in American supermarkets. But since 1986 — ironically thanks to the threat of a McDonald's appearing in Rome — both the Slow Food and then the Slow City movements were born.

Now Italians eschew fast food, and — well — fast living.

Heirloom tomatoes are available, of course, in America. Especially near Philadelphia, where tomatoes were cultivated before they traveled to Italy. Any good local farm stand here sells at least one old variety, and occasionally some appear in Whole Foods.

In Italy, however, heirlooms are everywhere — even in supermarkets.

Italian Slow Fooders demand produce that's ultra fresh, and given the price of gas, food must be grown nearby. This also means that communities spend the bulk of their food dollars on local farmers, thereby strengthening the local economy.

The fact that local agriculture could better fuel their local economies attracted the attention of many Italian municipalities. And so out of the Slow Food movement came the Slow City movement, which shares the same philosophy of keeping it local, small and environmentally sound. By protecting what's already there.

Of course Italy has an abundance of treasures to protect. Gazing over their hills — checkered with vineyards and olive groves — I was shocked by what I didn't see. I saw none of the billboards and sprawly developments that pockmark the American landscape.

This uplifting vision of an uncommercialized landscape is a gift that Philadelphians are just now beginning to see. Especially as we take up arms — and win — against billboards, riverside slot-boxes and bridges built only for speed.

Italy preserves its built heritage with the same ferocity that it protects the land. Italians may lack the power that comes from petroleum, but they understand the force of "embedded energy" — the intrinsic power of a brick or stone building that's withstood the test of time.

Philadelphia, for an American city, has a huge storehouse of embedded energy — in its 400 years of buildings, churches, roadways, waterworks and transit systems. A powerhouse in the pre-oil world, Philadelphia has plenty of zip left in what city planners call our "good bones."

This is what makes urban renewal — the wholesale decimation of entire blocks — so wrong for us. You could even say that Philly's next building boom is already in place, because the "greenest" buildings are those already built.

As a society that celebrates consumerism, Americans equate conservation with privation — if not deprivation. But in the two weeks I visited Italy, I experienced how life in the slow lane can be sweet — even at $8 a gallon.

So as Philadelphians lent our tomatoes to Italy, maybe we ought to borrow something from them: a deep appreciation of what we already have. That is, if we can only slow down enough to see it.

For more information on Slow Food, go to slowfoodphilly.org.