Summer Issue of YES! - Stories of Great Places

The editorial team has found lots of initiatives to create more beautiful and sustainable cities. People are working on every aspect of these questions -- how to bring gardens and organic produce into impoverished neighborhoods. How to transform the suburbs into places of community and beauty. How to create urban commons that bring people together.

These are some of the stories that you'll find in the summer issue of YES!

Our goal is to make this issue one that opens a sense of possibility for ways we can live that are far more attractive, that enliven the spirit, and connect us to the natural world even if we live in a densely populated city.

My 15-year-old son Alex and I spent the weekend in Portland, Oregon, visiting my daughter who is attending college there. The three of us spent some time touring a city I lived in for nearly 10 years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. We had lunch at one of Portland's many eclectic locally owned cafés, and stopped in to check out a used-everything shop, and a worker-owned record and CD store. My daughter noted that she could return to these places on one of the many bus lines and light rail lines that make these small neighborhood centers accessible.

We visited an intersection that neighbors had transformed into a painted, planted, sculpted community space, with the help of Portland City Repair. We stopped in at the People's Food Co-op, where I used to shop, and at the large home that had once belonged to the New Society Gardens Land Trust and had once housed a bunch of young people who wanted to change the world.

On the four-hour trip back to Suquamish, we decided to stop for lunch. Alex told me he didn’t want to stop at any of the fast food places that line the freeway. Instead, he suggested we look a little harder until we find a “cool, locally owned café.”