Daily Score Blog

Noticed some changes in your yard? My rhododendron bush was blooming weeks ago  - in February. If you think that seems odd, you're right. The major papers report that spring is arriving earlier - and it’s most obvious in the Pacific Northwest. See the Seattle P-I and the Oregonian.

Please welcome freelance editor Christina Claassen to Sightline Daily’s team. Christina works three mornings a week from her home at the North Cascades Institute. (Yes, she lives in the park!) She clocks in at 5 and helps clip the regional papers. Christina is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Note from Alan: One of the toughest challenges for families with young children living in cities is the lack of safe, accessible outdoor play space for kids—a narrow urban balcony is no substitute for a fenced backyard. But Seattle-area planner (and mother) Alyse Nelson, who spent six months in Copenhagen documenting how to make a city bicycle friendly, discovered the Danish solution to this problem. She discovered it by looking out her kitchen window. Here’s her report.

Our Copenhagen apartment was in an old neighborhood. It was on a commercial street full of shops, with buses passing every two minutes. Our street was lined with marvelous Danish bikeways that made the entire city our two-wheeled home. I had lived in a compact neighborhood in Seattle, so I was already sold on urban life.

But I discovered that Copenhagen, though far denser than Seattle, is also dramatically more friendly to children. Like much urban housing in the City of Cyclists, our apartment overlooked a green and spacious courtyard. Gated where it met the sidewalk and shared only with others in our building and adjacent buildings on our block, it had play equipment, benches, chairs, and barbeques set amid gardens, lawns, and full-grown trees. It filled the interior of our block; it was like having a park inside your house. (The photo above is the wintertime view of the courtyard from my kitchen window.