Letters to the Editor

What You Say

On Deadly Ground

Being a city planner who has actually designed cities and proto-cities and continues to do so, you cannot know annoying it is to still see architects getting press for urban re-design, or city planning, for having designed a row house or an infill house out of some cute materials with nontraditional fenestration and even with recycled materials [Cover Story, "Sudden Impact," A.D. Amorosi, Oct. 15, 2008].

Cities cover great areas. They are covered with expansive and complex systems for moving people and materials. They process materials and enviro-essentials as well as enviro-residuals; so they are also covered with processes that evolve and are affected by exogenous factors and forces.

Cities are not houses — no matter how cute they appear.

DesignPhiladelphia is on safe ground when it is talking about the manufacture of objects that stimulate mass consumption. I think this is not good, but at least with that focus it is what it says. When it tries to escape interior design and move to housing and call it city planning, it is preposterously silly and dangerous to real policy discussion

Paolo Pezzotta
Via e-mail

I have been reading the City Paper blog items and columns [Editor's Letter, "Anticipation," Brian Howard, Oct. 23, 2008] about the joy of the Phillies and how much the success of this team means to the city. I, too, have been swept up by the optimism that has gripped the city.

I have also been thinking about another group of athletes whose success in the upcoming Philadelphia Marathon may also mean a lot to the future of Philadelphia. These students are part of an innovative program called Students Run Philly Style, which is helping them learn about setting priorities, working toward clear goals and making investments that will pay off in the long run. The program is aimed at improving students' academic performance, health and life chances by helping them meet the ultimate challenge: completing a marathon. In pursuing this quest, they discover their untapped abilities to succeed in distance running and in life.

On top of helping young people become healthier, we're helping them do better in school. Only about two-thirds of American teenagers (and just half of all African-American, Latino and American Indian teens) graduate with a regular diploma four years after they enter high school. Data shows that our students do better in school. In Los Angeles, where the Students Run program originated, 90 percent of program participants finish high school, compared with 60 percent of all students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The program is run by the Philadelphia-based National Nursing Centers Consortium, which sees it as a way to prepare young people, both physically and mentally, for the demands of life after school.

Someday one of these young students who will be competing in the marathon on Nov. 23 will be doing just that.

Heather McDanel
Program director, Students Run Philly Style

In last week's "What's Cooking" food events column [Food, Nikki Volpicelli, Oct. 23, 2008], Pabst Blue Ribbon, the glorious beer that is colloquially abbreviated as "PBR," was somehow misidentified as "PRB." This was a egregious and inexcusable error (100 percent associate editor Drew Lazor's fault, not Volpicelli's) and City Paper feels downright terrible about it.